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http://www.businessinsider.com/handy-shows-everything-startups-do-wrong-2015-8This home-cleaning service shows everything that startups do horribly wronghttp://www.businessinsider.com/handy-shows-everything-startups-do-wrong-2015-8
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 15:29:00 -0400Alison Griswold
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55be63df2acae717448b9cb8-1197-898/screen shot 2015-08-02 at 2.37.36 pm.png" alt="Handy" data-mce-source="Handy" data-mce-caption="A screenshot of a Handy promotional video" /></p><p>Handy&rsquo;s third birthday party last month was everything you&rsquo;d expect from a startup soiree.</p>
<p>Twenty- and thirtysomethings crowded the dimly lit bar at Pergola, a Mediterranean spot in Manhattan&rsquo;s Flatiron District, munching on skewers of free-range chicken and a seemingly endless cascade of spicy meatballs with tzatziki sauce, as a hoodie-clad co-founder boasted about the company&rsquo;s recent triumphs.</p>
<p>Handy had good reason to be in high spirits.</p>
<p>The startup, whose app allows users to hire, pay, and rate home cleaners, had just completed its one-millionth booking.</p>
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<p>I had come to the party at the invitation of a Handy PR rep and was making the rounds, introducing myself as a journalist and chatting with employees. Most had drinks in hand and seemed eager to celebrate.</p>
<p>But when I slipped into conversation with a woman from Handy&rsquo;s customer service department, she told me something surprising.</p>
<p>&ldquo;A couple months ago,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;we thought the company was going to implode.&rdquo; She alluded to outsourcing and infighting, and a workplace culture roiled by anxiety over the company&rsquo;s future.</p>
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<p>That didn&rsquo;t track with what Umang Dua, one of Handy&rsquo;s co-founders, had been telling me and another reporter just moments earlier.</p>
<p>Since launching in 2012, Handy has expanded to 28 cities, including ones in Canada and England. It employs a full-time staff of more than 160 across all these cities, and has enlisted about 10,000 cleaners to work on its platform. In March, Handy notched $15 million in funding, and is<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-10/handy-said-raising-funds-seeking-valuation-up-to-500-million" target="_blank">reportedly</a> closing in on another $50 million. That could value the company at half a billion dollars.</p>
<p>The expansion, the millionth booking&mdash;all signs point to growth. Sure, Handy isn&rsquo;t profitable yet, but what 3-year-old startup is?</p>
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<p>Handy is unquestionably a savvy young company, one that has conjured a valuable new business out of thin air. But in the weeks following the party at Pergola, I learned that its ascent in the so-called 1099 economy has been a bumpy one&mdash;for its users, its employees, and for the independent contractors who actually do the cleaning.</p>
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<p>Former Handy employees I spoke with described a workplace that has conformed to every caricature of the contemporary startup: Grueling hours for staffers. Performance judged on the basis of stultifying metrics. An office culture that is at once elitist and boorish.</p>
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<p>As for the cleaners, many have enjoyed the business the Handy platform has brought them.</p>
<p>But others have felt exploited by the company&rsquo;s policies. They face harsh penalties for missed jobs. They must maintain exceptionally high ratings to earn the most competitive wages and to keep getting gigs. And as contractors, not employees, they enjoy few if any traditional workplace protections.</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55be6606371d2279018bbeed-1332-999/screen shot 2015-08-02 at 2.41.11 pm.png" alt="handy employees" data-mce-source="Handy" data-mce-caption="Veronica and Daniella, two Handy cleaners" /></p>
<p>Three former cleaners have now filed two separate suits alleging that Handy classifies them as contractors but oversees them like employees&mdash;and demanding that the company compensate them for their unpaid time and expenses.</p>
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<p>Will Handy succeed in becoming the Uber of household chores? Or will it come to serve as a cautionary tale for startups in the white-hot 1099 economy?</p>
<p>There&rsquo;s no denying investors&rsquo; enthusiasm for companies that swoop into a sector and establish businesses with lean operations and armies of contractors to do the dirty work. But the imperatives to grow these businesses by leaps and bounds while keeping costs extraordinarily low are pushing companies like Handy to the brink. Even potential half-billion-dollar valuations can&rsquo;t hide the strain.</p>
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<p>Every good startup has a good origin story, one that begins with a problem and ends with an ingenious, app-powered solution. Uber&rsquo;s founders couldn&rsquo;t get a cab on a snowy night in Paris. Airbnb&rsquo;s execs had extra room in their loft. Handy began with a mess.</p>
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<p>It was May 2012, and Oisin Hanrahan, a first-year student at Harvard Business School, had two roommates.</p>
<p>The first one, Dua, was messy. The second, a guy named Dan, &ldquo;was really messy.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The three set out to enlist some help getting their home in order, but finding a cleaner in the Boston area was surprisingly difficult. There was no online booking service. No convenient times available. No reliable, centralized rating system to assess the options.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We had exactly this problem,&rdquo; Hanrahan says, &ldquo;of how do you find someone you can trust to clean?&rdquo;</p>
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<p>Handybook, as it was initially called, launched in Boston that month. Hanrahan and Dua&rsquo;s vision was to create a digital platform that would help customers find trustworthy cleaners for their homes, and help good service providers find work.</p>
<p>In June, Handybook pushed out a version for New York City. That fall, Hanrahan and Dua raised a few million dollars in capital and shortly afterward moved their five-person team to New York. They borrowed their first office from General Catalyst, one of the company&rsquo;s investors. At the time, they had fewer than 100 cleaners using the service.</p>
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<p>The operation was lean by design, in line with the gospel of the 1099 economy.</p>
<p>The core belief of its evangelists is that you can build empires without actually owning much of anything and without actually employing the people who deliver your services. (The moniker 1099 nods to the tax forms the IRS requires of most independent contractors.) In the 1099 economy, the company&rsquo;s role is to facilitate two sides of a marketplace, linking people who have time and skills to people who need their help.</p>
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<p>Home services seemed like a good fit for the 1099 approach.</p>
<p>In the past, getting your house tidied typically involved either hiring someone through an expensive cleaning company or searching for help on the gray market. Handy made the process as easy as tapping an icon on a screen. To book a cleaning through Handy&rsquo;s app (or its website), you type in your ZIP code, the number of rooms in your home, and an ideal date and time.&nbsp;Handy spits back a recommended cleaning duration, a price quote, and a list of available slots.</p>
<p>In New York, for example, a three-hour cleaning will run you around $80, though easy-to-obtain coupon codes can bring the price far lower. (The company also offers other &ldquo;handyman&rdquo; services like furniture assembly and moving help, but cleaning makes up the bulk of its revenue, at <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/14/handy-hits-1-million-a-week-in-bookings-as-cleaning-economy-consolidates/" target="_blank">85 percent</a> as of last fall.) Handy says it earns about 20 percent on the average booking, a figure in line with, say, what Uber typically takes for rides on its UberX platform.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Handy&rsquo;s fully vetted professionals provide top-quality home cleaning services,&rdquo; the site promises. &ldquo;Put down the sponge and let Handy&rsquo;s cleaners take care of the dirty work!&rdquo;</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55be632d371d22723a8b9d3d-863-647/screen shot 2015-02-05 at 5.48.36 pm-1.png" alt="Screen Shot 2015 02 05 at 5.48.36 PM" data-mce-source="Handy" /></p>
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<p>Handy&rsquo;s idea landed right when tech-industry investors were in a fervor for companies that provided on-demand conveniences and gig-based innovation.</p>
<p>The company scooped up $10 million in funding in October 2013, and by the end of the year it was live in 12 cities. In spring 2014, a few months after receiving a $3.7 million infusion, Handy launched in a <a href="http://betakit.com/new-yorks-handybook-the-uber-for-household-services-expands-to-toronto/" target="_blank">dozen more cities</a>, including its first international one, Toronto. Another $30 million of financing followed that June, and a month later Handy headed to London.</p>
<p>The company was growing exponentially&mdash;and its customer base was <a href="http://blog.handy.com/year-in-review-we-crunched-the-numbers/" target="_blank">growing with it</a>. In March 2013, Handy booked one appointment every 90 minutes. One year later, it was booking a customer every three minutes. By September 2014, it was one every 30 seconds.</p>
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<p>To accommodate this ferocious expansion, Handy went on a hiring spree.</p>
<p>The team of actual employees at Handy headquarters, which in February 2013 was still just five people, grew to 50 over the next 12 months. Handy had a small corps of programmers and other staffers who kept its digital platform ticking, but a large number of new hires were concentrated in the customer experience team, the group tasked with fielding questions, complaints, and other inquiries from both Handy&rsquo;s customers and its cleaners.</p>
<p>In spring 2014, Handy began onboarding customer-experience employees in &ldquo;classes&rdquo; of seven to 10 people at a time. Quarters grew tight quickly, and the company bounced around Manhattan from office to office. It was a classic startup atmosphere: Former employees describe fast-paced and demanding work powered by catered meals, ample snacks, and a well-stocked alcohol closet. (Snack orders included numerous 30-racks of Bud Light.)</p>
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<p>This past November, at the annual Web Summit in Dublin, Hanrahan explained why the company had pursued such aggressive growth.</p>
<p>It was &ldquo;scale for the sake of a better customer experience,&rdquo; he said, a strategic push to solve problems of supply and demand.</p>
<p>More cleaners in each city meant shorter wait times and greater flexibility for customers. At the same time, more customers meant greater job availability for cleaners. Managed properly, growth in supply and demand would become self-sustaining. &ldquo;I think scale for the sake of scale is stupid,&rdquo; said Hanrahan, who serves as Handy&rsquo;s CEO. But scale for customer experience, &ldquo;like, that makes a shitload of sense.&rdquo;</p>
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<p>Yet as Handy scaled, its in-house operation was experiencing growing pains.</p>
<p>In reporting this story, I spoke or emailed with 10 former and two current Handy employees, four of whom were put in touch with me by Handy. Of the former employees, nine left on their own terms and one was fired. Two now work for another cleaning startup.</p>
<p>With the exceptions of Justin Martin, who was the lead of Handy&rsquo;s engineering team from October 2013 to March 2015, as well as the four people Handy connected me with,&nbsp;the sources requested anonymity because they feared retribution from the company and, in some cases, had signed nondisclosure agreements.</p>
<p>The anonymous former employees recount operational problems and a management team they saw as out of touch with issues on the ground.</p>
<p>They also describe a company whose culture was abrasive, often inappropriate, a &ldquo;Harvard boys&rsquo; club,&rdquo; and, in its early days, sexist. They detail a scaling process in which employees struggled to keep up with the company&rsquo;s rapidly expanding offerings, leading an already frat-like culture to curdle into something worse. I asked each of the former employees what they liked about Handy. The cheeriest response I heard was, &ldquo;it was definitely a learning experience.&rdquo;</p>
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<p>Many startups, born in business schools and forced to grow up fast, run into a tough reality like this sooner or later. But Handy, hurtling toward success, crashed into it hard.</p>
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<p>Handy is reluctant to acknowledge these problems, much less discuss them.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Handy has rapidly expanded, and job duties for some individuals changed over time. As we experienced this growth, we were proactive in evaluating policies and establishing best practices for our business,&rdquo; a company spokesperson writes in an email, when I ask what the company has done well and what it could have done better. &ldquo;Through this process, we have become a better, stronger company.&rdquo;</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55be674f2acae7b7188bc050-1821-1366/18127037735_24d8ce88d1_k.jpg" alt="Umang Dua" data-mce-source="INSIDER IMAGES/Gary He" data-mce-caption="Umang Dua at Internet Week, 2015" /></p>
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<p>The employees I talked to said that process wasn&rsquo;t always a smooth one.</p>
<p>The first signs of trouble emerged in summer 2013, as Handy&rsquo;s expansion ramped up, and the company&rsquo;s still-small staff had to balance recruiting users, onboarding cleaners, fixing technological bugs, and resolving customer issues. The strain fell particularly hard on the fledgling customer-experience team. Its five members routinely worked 12-hour days, five or six days a week.</p>
<p>Even so, wait times on Handy&rsquo;s customer service phone line would often top an hour or two.</p>
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<p>&ldquo;Customers were just yelling at people because the system was really bad, cleaners were not showing up, stuff like that,&rdquo; says an early member of the customer-experience team.</p>
<p>He and another employee who was there that summer say Dua would often sit listening to the customer-experience team field complaints and &ldquo;scream&rdquo; for cleaners to be fired.</p>
<p>&ldquo;A lot of [early Handy employees] broke down crying all the time,&rdquo; one says. &ldquo;It was just a horrible place to be.&rdquo; A spokesman for Handy says the story about Dua is &ldquo;totally false.&rdquo;</p>
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<p>The fall of 2013 found Handy still struggling to fix its customer-experience problems, as well as develop technology fast enough to accommodate its surging growth.</p>
<p>The company &ldquo;experienced periods of high demand where call wait times were longer than desirable,&rdquo; Handy&rsquo;s spokesman says. The pressure to improve &ldquo;was noticeable by the culture of the company,&rdquo; says Martin, who left this March to start a new company. &ldquo;We were growing really quickly and we were just racing to build the technology to help deal with this.&rdquo; Today, Handy says its average call wait is between two and three minutes.</p>
<div>
<p>Former Handy employees describe an office that, early on in the company&rsquo;s existence, tolerated joking vulgarities like a &ldquo;Wheel of Fellatio&rdquo; (a makeshift Wheel of Fortune with sex acts instead of dollar amounts) and team members who frequently referred to female employees as sluts.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Just like, &lsquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re a slut,&rsquo; &rdquo; says one of Handy&rsquo;s early customer-experience employees. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t even know why that happened.&rdquo;</p>
<p>In the summer of 2013, a whiteboard wall in the company&rsquo;s office at 350 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan would often display crude and offensive language.</p>
<p>One week, a missive on the whiteboard managed to fit slurs toward women, black people, and gay people into just five words. When one of Handy&rsquo;s neighbors dropped by to ask that it be taken down, someone used the whiteboard to taunt that company. Only after an employee of the neighboring company emailed Dua did he promise to deal with the messages.</p>
<p><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55be6d802acae7b7188bc05b-1824-1368/15105021133_ff747f2a99_k.jpg" alt="Oisin Hanrahan" data-mce-source="Web Summit" data-mce-caption="Handy founder Oisin Hanrahan at the 2014 Web Summit" /></p>
<p>Handy says the person responsible for these messages was &ldquo;reprimanded,&rdquo; &ldquo;given a written warning,&rdquo; and &ldquo;no longer works at Handy and is not representative of our culture or our values.&rdquo;</p>
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<p>By many accounts, Handy grew out of its worst tendencies, but continued to push the boundaries of appropriateness with frequent alcohol consumption and a visible hookup culture.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Lots of gossip among senior leadership about who&rsquo;s hooking up with whom, photos being shared,&rdquo; says a former operations employee, who left this spring. &ldquo;Our cultures were very much fueled by alcohol.&rdquo;</p>
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<p>Handy broadly contests how former employees characterize its work environment.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We take our culture extremely seriously and are committed to building an inclusive, supportive organization,&rdquo; Handy&rsquo;s spokesman writes, when asked whether company culture has ever been inappropriate or abrasive. Asked about a &ldquo;hookup&rdquo; culture, or one driven by alcohol, he responds, &ldquo;That characterization is totally off base.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Handy is &ldquo;proud of the fact that we bring people together in an environment where people enjoy doing meaningful work and in the process form real friendships,&rdquo; the spokesman writes.</p>
<p>When I inquire about the Wheel of Fellatio, the spokesman tells me this is &ldquo;the first we&rsquo;ve heard of a &lsquo;wheel,&rsquo; &rdquo; adding, &ldquo;that sort of thing has no place at Handy.&rdquo; (The two former employees who described the wheel also provided Slate&nbsp;with a photo of it.)</p>
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<p>In the summer of 2014, Handy hired Carrie Zuchorski, a former executive at Weight Watchers, as vice president of customer experience.</p>
<p>With her arrival, five former customer-experience employees say the already overwhelmed department became even more so thanks to the imposition of rigid, metrics-focused goals. Employees were required to have a certain number of &ldquo;customer interactions&rdquo;&mdash;things like emails and phone calls&mdash;every hour. They were publicly ranked and given preference for picking shifts based on the quantity and quality of their service. Former customer-experience employees say they were also hamstrung by poor communication between departments.</p>
<p>When the product team made changes to Handy&rsquo;s app, two former employees say, the customer-experience team would sometimes only learn about it when confused users called in.</p>
<p>On top of that, customer-experience employees were now being monitored on everything from when they arrived to how long they spent eating lunch and taking bathroom breaks. Morale plummeted. &ldquo;It definitely started a culture of resentment,&rdquo; a former associate in the department says.</p>
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<p>What struck these former customer-experience employees as draconian policies were to Handy&rsquo;s mind necessary for running the growing business.</p>
<p>After Zuchorski&rsquo;s arrival, the company had switched its customer-experience team from salaried to hourly positions.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Keeping track of start and end times are important to make sure our employees are properly compensated,&rdquo; Handy&rsquo;s spokesman says in a statement.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Additionally, breaks and when agents are away from their desks are monitored to provide customers with the best experience possible. If a [customer-experience] employee is not at their call station, that needs to be recognized in the system&rdquo; or else &ldquo;calls will continue to be routed to them when they are not available to answer them.&rdquo;</p>
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<p>Even with these changes in place, by the fall it became clear to Handy that the Manhattan-based team wasn&rsquo;t working out.</p>
<p>Employees there tended to want more career development than Handy could afford, and the resources dedicated to them were detracting from other parts of the business, like &ldquo;growth or marketing function,&rdquo; Hanrahan says.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It just wasn&rsquo;t a good fit.&rdquo; The platform also needed to support hundreds of thousands of customers, thousands of cleaners, and call volumes that could run as high as 10,000 in a week.</p>
<p>So Handy started outsourcing customer-experience positions to call centers in Missouri and Florida (&ldquo;a more mature and sophisticated customer service team,&rdquo; the spokesman writes).</p>
<p>But instead of shortening phone queues and easing workloads for people in New York, outsourcing made things worse for the in-house customer-experience members who remained. The call center employees were unfamiliar with Handy&rsquo;s systems, their former New York counterparts say.</p>
<p>Stress climbed. Wait times, which had improved to around 15 minutes, increased again.&nbsp;Over the next few months, several customer-experience employees quit.</p>
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<p>Early this year, Handy began to fire people in the customer-experience department.</p>
<p>&ldquo;They would fire them like 10 at a time,&rdquo; says a former employee, who quit this March. &ldquo;They didn&rsquo;t do it in front of us but all the conference rooms were glass. So they would call people in and then you would see people gather their stuff and leave.&rdquo;</p>
<p>In Handy&rsquo;s New York office, the customer-experience team that once numbered around 100 employees has dwindled to about two dozen.</p>
<div>
<p>As intense scaling took its toll on the company&rsquo;s culture through the first half of 2014, it also wore on Handy&rsquo;s financials.</p>
<p>Transforming the market for home services in 28 cities isn&rsquo;t just ambitious&mdash;it&rsquo;s expensive. Onboarding each new cleaner in the U.S. cost hundreds of dollars, two employees who were involved with operations say: Expenses included background checks, phone interviews, and a $250 initial cleaning kit whose cost was partially borne by the contractors.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55be69842acae72d5f8bbbc2-1317-988/screen shot 2015-08-02 at 3.02.33 pm.png" alt="handy" data-mce-source="Handy" /></p>
<p>As of this February, Handy was bringing on 400 to 500 new cleaners in a single week, one of those employees estimates. Handy, which says it still brings on hundreds of cleaners each week, sets the current onboarding cost significantly lower, at less than $100.</p>
<p>Even so, that&rsquo;s enough to easily bring Handy&rsquo;s spending on enrolling new cleaning &ldquo;pros&rdquo;&mdash;as it refers to contractors&mdash;to tens of thousands of dollars each week.</p>
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<div>
<p>Investing a lot of money to vet cleaners didn&rsquo;t do much to ensure that they&rsquo;d stick around, however.</p>
<p>According to one of the employees who worked in operations, Handy&rsquo;s internal metrics showed that within 60 to 90 days, between 20 and 40 percent of new cleaners would become inactive on the service. (Handy prefers the inverse framing, noting that the majority of pros are still active after three months.)</p>
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<div>
<p>To most of the former customer-experience and operations employees I spoke with, that high turnover was hardly surprising.</p>
<p>At various stretches in the company&rsquo;s existence, contractors frequently encountered problems receiving payments, former customer-experience employees say. Lots of cleaners also didn&rsquo;t understand that, because they were independent contractors, there was no withholding on their earnings, and they needed to set aside money to pay taxes.</p>
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<p>But the most glaring payment complaints involved Handy&rsquo;s pay-docking policies.</p>
<p>Cleaners would have money withheld from future paychecks if they showed up late to a job, canceled on short notice, or missed an appointment entirely. These financial penalties are outlined in the &ldquo;<a href="https://www.handy.com/pro_terms" target="_blank">Service Professional Agreement</a>&rdquo; that all Handy service providers are required to sign.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Cancellation by Service Professional may result in a fee being charged to Service Professional as described further in Schedule 3, which may be modified from time to time by Handy,&rdquo; the terms read. So may &ldquo;Service Professional&rsquo;s failure to complete a Job in accordance with Service Requester&rsquo;s specifications.&rdquo; Cleaners who receive poor reviews from customers also earn less per hour and risk removal from Handy&rsquo;s service&mdash;a fact largely invisible to users of the service.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55be6a2e2acae76e098baf16-1335-1001/screen shot 2015-08-02 at 3.05.14 pm.png" alt="Handy" data-mce-source="Handy" data-mce-caption="Dulce, a Handy contractor" /></p>
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<p>Handy cleaners are paid one of four hourly rates between $15 and $22 based on how highly rated they are and how many jobs they&rsquo;ve worked in the past 28 days. The average cleaner makes around $17 an hour, Handy says.</p>
<p>Per the company policy viewable to pros on the Handy app, which a former employee provided Slate, Handy withholds $15 from the pay of cleaners who arrive late to a job by more than 30 minutes, as well as from those who cancel a booking less than 36 hours before the start time. Cleaners who don&rsquo;t show up at all are assessed a $35 penalty (plus the cost of the job, if the payment has already processed).</p>
<p>Most severe is the fine for cleaners who cancel jobs within two hours, who incur a withholding fee &ldquo;equal to what you would have been paid if you completed the job.&rdquo; In other words, pull out of a $60 cleaning job at the last minute, and you don&rsquo;t just lose the $60 earning opportunity&mdash;you&rsquo;re actually charged $60.</p>
<div class="text parbase text-34 section">
<p>Handy says these policies mirror how it charges customers who cancel bookings.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a dual-sided agreement where we want to deliver the best experience to customers and pros,&rdquo; Hanrahan says. &ldquo;If the customer cancels a booking within two hours, we actually pass the entire fee onto the pro, so the pro gets paid the entire amount irrespective of what happened.&rdquo; Fees assessed to cleaners are typically used to give customers credits for complimentary services.</p>
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<div class="text parbase text-35 section">
<p>Still, the policies troubled many members of the customer-experience team.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Obviously if they called in and were like someone died, &lsquo;my car broke down,&rsquo; real reasons, we would reverse it,&rdquo; one former employee says. &ldquo;But I would always worry about people who weren&rsquo;t going to call in because they were worried about losing their jobs,&rdquo; she says, noting that Handy&rsquo;s cleaners in New York are predominantly lower-income black and Latino women.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It was a really unfair system, and I felt so fucking guilty all the time, because I knew that the system was broken and that I couldn&rsquo;t do anything about it.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The cleaners I spoke with are torn between warm feelings for a platform that affords them flexibility and relatively good earnings and a frustration that Handy treats them like disposable contractors despite managing them quite closely.</p>
<p>When I tried Handy earlier this month, it went well.</p>
<p>The woman who cleaned my apartment was prompt, friendly, and polite. Shortly after arriving she changed into a baggy Handy shirt with a slight shrug, then set to work scraping the grime from my bathroom. She said she&rsquo;d worked in cleaning for a long time and that using Handy made it easier for her to find jobs. I heard similar things from Sewanda Williams, a cleaner who has worked for Handy in San Francisco for a little more than a year and likes that she can schedule cleanings in the evening, around her 9-to-5 job.</p>
<p>But Williams&rsquo; experience has not been without its frustrations.</p>
<p>She has been irked when Handy has made small changes to its payment rules &ldquo;without actually contacting you or giving you warning.&rdquo; Another woman I spoke with, who has cleaned for Handy in New York for almost three years and requested anonymity since she still works on the platform, complains that Handy tells customers that they are &ldquo;not expected&rdquo; to leave tips.</p>
<p>She describes recently not receiving payment for a job in a timely fashion because of identity verification issues, but says that rather than help her over the phone, Handy would only communicate with her via email.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s really unprofessional,&rdquo; she says.</p>
<p>The cleaners I talked with know Handy isn&rsquo;t perfect, but they have decided to take the problems&mdash;the lack of tips, the poor cleaner support and questionable treatment as independent contractors&mdash;in stride. &ldquo;I love Handybook,&rdquo; the New York cleaner insists. &ldquo;They are a good company, it&rsquo;s just little problems they&rsquo;ve got.&rdquo;</p>
<div class="text parbase text-39 section">
<p>Not every Handy contractor is so forgiving.</p>
<p>Last October, two former cleaners filed a class action lawsuit against Handy in California, claiming a litany of labor violations. The suit, brought by the sisters Vilma and Greta Zenelaj, alleges that Handy failed to compensate them for their full time, including travel; failed to pay a minimum wage for all hours worked; failed to provide rest and meal breaks; failed to reimburse for business expenses; failed to remit tips; and failed to furnish timely wage statements.</p>
<p>Uniting all of these was a central assertion: &ldquo;Handy violates California law by misclassifying Cleaners as independent contractors when they are, in fact, employees.&rdquo; Two weeks ago, another class action lawsuit was filed against Handy in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts alleging much the same.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55be6b0c2acae70f008bc544-4304-3228/ap295469568532.jpg" alt="Uber Protest" data-mce-source="Seth Wenig/AP" /></p>
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<p>Handy is far from alone in the 1099 economy in facing legal obstacles. Over the past few years, contractors have filed similar suits against Uber, Lyft, laundry service Washio, food delivery services Postmates and Caviar, shipping platform Shyp, and Handy competitor Homejoy. Representing the plaintiffs in many of these cases is Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Boston-based attorney.</p>
<div class="text text-41 parbase section">
<p>The Zenelaj complaint argues across 30 pages that Handy was exercising &ldquo;extensive control&rdquo; over how cleaners performed their jobs.&nbsp;It was, in other words, treating them like employees, but paying them like contractors.</p>
<p>Handy required cleaners to attend training sessions, gave them an &ldquo;extensive Handy-labeled checklist&rdquo; to follow, instructed them on what supplies to use and how to dress, detailed how to interact with customers, and monitored performance.</p>
<p>It also could terminate cleaners at its discretion.</p>
<p>One former Handy cleaner I spoke with said she was required to attend a two-hour, unpaid training session at a Handy employee&rsquo;s apartment before being hired to work on the platform.</p>
<p>In presentations Handy used at cleaner training and orientation as late as fall 2014 (copies of which were provided to <strong><em>Slate</em></strong> by a former employee as well as by Liss-Riordan), the company outlined its intricate rules and strict expectations. Cleaners were instructed to follow Handy&rsquo;s five &ldquo;golden rules&rdquo;: showing up to jobs, bringing supplies and wearing Handy apparel, being on time, being thorough, and being professional.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Breaking any of the Golden Rules can lead to removal from the Handybook platform,&rdquo; the presentation cautioned.</p>
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<p>Such quality controls are necessary for any business, but especially one like Handy, which wants to tame the rangy market for home services.</p>
<p>&ldquo;This is not an easy business,&rdquo; Hanrahan says. &ldquo;You want to strike this balance between incentivizing great behavior and incentivizing them to do a great job. And, at the same time, in the event that they can&rsquo;t do a great job, you want to give them the opportunity and feedback on how they can do better. But if they&rsquo;re not delivering a customer experience that&rsquo;s in line with what your customers want, you need to suspend them from the platform.&rdquo;</p>
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<p>To a judge, though, &ldquo;incentivizes great behavior&rdquo; might tiptoe too close to &ldquo;exerts control like an employer.&rdquo;</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s a line many 1099 startups have struggled to walk. Uber, for example, doesn&rsquo;t make its drivers wear uniforms, but does advise them on how to interact with customers and threatens to deactivate those who fall below certain ratings thresholds.</p>
<p>Is that enough to make Uber the employer of its drivers? A jury will <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/03/12/uber_lyft_employment_cases_juries_could_decide_the_legal_fate_of_the_sharing.html">soon weigh</a> that question.</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/55be6b9e2acae7b7188bc057-3112-2334/rtr4ofm8.jpg" alt="Uber protest" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Stephen Lam" data-mce-caption="Demonstrators hold signs during a protest organized by the San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance against ridesharing services Uber and Lyft." /></p>
<p>Other companies, like <a href="http://www.wired.com/2015/07/shyp-makes-couriers-employees-big-change/" target="_blank">Shyp</a> and grocery-service&nbsp;<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/06/22/instacart-makes-some-contractors-employees-training/" target="_blank">Instacart</a>, have decided to play it safe and switch some or all of their contractors over to employee status.</p>
<p>At the same time, companies save an estimated 30 percent on labor costs from working with contractors instead of employees, says Wally Hopp, professor of technology and operations at the University of Michigan&rsquo;s Ross School of Business. They have a powerful incentive to keep their workers off of their staffs.</p>
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<div class="text parbase text-44 section">
<p>In Handy&rsquo;s case, a ruling that its cleaners are actually employees might also open the company up to other legal problems.</p>
<p>Sarah Leberstein, an attorney at the National Employment Law Project, says that Handy&rsquo;s detailed and punitive withholding procedures would likely be illegal if they were applied to employees in New York, since the state department of labor&rsquo;s list of permissible deductions includes health benefits, charitable contributions, child care, and various other payments &ldquo;for the benefit of the employee,&rdquo; but not late fees.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s policies like these, combined with Handy&rsquo;s comprehensive cleaner trainings, its strict scheduling, and its control over cleaner pay rates, that suggest to critics like Liss-Riordan that the company has stretched the boundaries between employees and contractors more than many other startups in the 1099 space.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Handy is one of those companies that I believe is crossing the line in even more blatant ways,&rdquo; Liss-Riordan says.</p>
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<p>In a victory yet perhaps also a bad omen for Handy, the company&rsquo;s main U.S. competitor, Homejoy, announced last Friday that it would shut down at the end of July.</p>
<p>The &ldquo;deciding factor&rdquo; was four lawsuits filed against the company, Homejoy co-founder Adora Cheung <a href="http://recode.net/2015/07/17/cleaning-services-startup-homejoy-shuts-down-after-battling-worker-classification-lawsuits/" target="_blank">told <em>Re/code</em></a>. Homejoy&rsquo;s exit leaves Handy the dominant home-cleaning platform in North America.</p>
<p>It has won the market.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Handy carefully built out a city-by-city strategy,&rdquo; says Jeremiah Daly, a former Handy investor. &ldquo;The business had a competitor that was expanding what appeared to be quicker, but the way these markets are won, it&rsquo;s unclear whether it&rsquo;s the biggest company by revenue, or the most fundamentally sound company that wins at the end of the day.&rdquo;</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55be6bdb2acae7f4028bc5ab-1440-1080/10633495_10152815354562225_3459220277517440231_o.jpg" alt="Homejoy" data-mce-source="Facebook/homejoyinc" /></p>
<p>But Handy still faces legal questions similar to the ones that caused Homejoy to exit the market.</p>
<div class="text parbase section text-46">
<p>Could Handy go the way of Homejoy? Might it have to concede, as Instacart has, that the contractor model at the heart of the 1099 economy threatens the soundness of its business? The company seems to be asking itself these questions, because it&rsquo;s already making changes.</p>
</div>
<div class="text parbase text-47 section">
<p>For one thing, Handy has tweaked the language it uses in its dealing with contractors.</p>
<p>In its current onboarding materials, Handy notes prominently that it will not tell its pros how they must do a cleaning job, which specific jobs to take, or how to manage their schedules. The five golden rules are now &ldquo;guidelines.&rdquo; Cleaning do&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;ts are prefaced with &ldquo;customers have told us&rdquo;&mdash;as in &ldquo;Customers have told us: Only use gentle dish soap and warm water when cleaning stone counters and floors.&rdquo;</p>
</div>
<div class="text parbase text-48 section">
<p>Handy is also hoping that a growing debate among economists, politicians, and lawyers over the old classifications of &ldquo;employee&rdquo; and &ldquo;independent contractor&rdquo; could lead to the creation of a new, third employment category.</p>
<p>One much-discussed idea is the &ldquo;<a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-if-there-were-a-new-type-of-worker-dependent-contractor-1422405831" target="_blank">dependent contractor</a>,&rdquo; who would enjoy certain labor protections traditionally afforded to employees&mdash;perhaps a minimum wage&mdash;but retain the scheduling flexibility of a contractor.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We know we can&rsquo;t turn back the clock on the new economy and we can&rsquo;t turn our back on the independent professionals who work so hard to deliver high-quality services to consumers,&rdquo; a Handy spokesman writes in an email. &ldquo;At Handy, we recognize that this means that there may need to be new rules of the road. That&rsquo;s why we think it&rsquo;s time for an open dialogue between companies, workers, consumers, and government about how to foster the new economy in a way that protects workers and ensures that the sharing economy continues to create jobs and spur innovation.&rdquo;</p>
<div class="text parbase text-49 section">
<p>Courts, regulators, and legislators may solve that problem in the coming years, but improving company culture is a thornier matter.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I think Handy had a challenge or two scaling culture (although they are doing a better job today),&rdquo; Regan Bozman, Handy&rsquo;s former chief of staff, wrote me in an email. &ldquo;Onboarding 20-plus employees per month and integrating them is really challenging.</p>
<p>However, by about March 2015 there was a real recognition that this was an issue, and I think Umang and Oisin did a good job of addressing it.&rdquo; Shortly before Christmas&mdash;as customer-experience employees were quitting, but before they were being fired&mdash;Handy implemented a &ldquo;culture committee&rdquo; to plan events like happy hours and yoga sessions.</p>
</div>
<div class="text parbase text-50 section">
<p>Two current employees that Handy&rsquo;s spokesman put me in touch with offered brochure-ready statements about their experiences.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I enjoy the infectious passion Handy team members have for the success of the company. We&rsquo;re all in it together,&rdquo; Krista Karjalainen, who handles engineering outreach for Handy, wrote in an email. (She also accidentally forwarded me an exchange with a company spokesman, which revealed edits and additions he had made to her answers to my questions.) &ldquo;I can definitely say Handy has a great team with very smart people,&rdquo; Mayank Yadav, Handy&rsquo;s product manager for growth, said in his email. Both said they never felt that Handy&rsquo;s culture was sexist or elitist.</p>
</div>
<div class="text-51 text parbase section">
<p>When I met Hanrahan recently in Handy&rsquo;s office, however, I got a more measured response.</p>
<p>He seemed taken aback when I began to share the stories I&rsquo;d heard from former employees, describing the kinds of problems that aren&rsquo;t easily remedied by company birthday parties or endless snack supplies.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I think that any business starting out has a vision for what you want the company culture to be like, how you want it to feel,&rdquo; Hanrahan said with what struck me as genuine candor and a hint of regret. &ldquo;I think people can always do better in terms of culture. I think you look at something you built and you always feel like, &lsquo;Hey, how can I make this better?&rsquo;"</p>
<div class="text-52 text parbase section">
<p>Handy could benefit from more of that introspection.</p>
<p>But soul-searching isn&rsquo;t easy when you&rsquo;re racing to dominate a market&mdash;to put up big numbers, to raise huge sums, to become a household name&mdash;all before someone else beats you to it.</p>
<p><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/55be6deb371d22dd2e8baf62-1820-1365/15104187654_d7bc519ef1_k.jpg" alt="Oisin Hanrahan" data-mce-source="Web Summit" data-mce-caption="Oisin Hanrahan at the 2014 Web Summit" /></p>
<p>For three years, Hanrahan, Dua, and their team have trained their focus on that goal. They&rsquo;ve summoned their empire out of nothing. They&rsquo;ve booked its services a million times over. They&rsquo;ve watched their main competitor step aside. By the metrics alone, Handy is winning, but victory is about more than numbers, even in the 1099 economy.</p>
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<div class="text-53 text parbase section">
<p>The problems Handy ignored as it careened toward success may have seemed peripheral at the time, but they&rsquo;ve ultimately proven much more complicated, and arguably more important, than any questions of supply and demand.</p>
<p>Handy figured out how to tidy other people&rsquo;s homes, but along the way it neglected its own household. With unhappy cleaners seeking relief in the courts, Handy&rsquo;s contested labor model may soon face a reckoning, and perhaps be in need of revision. That&rsquo;s a mess this dynamic company may yet find a way to clean up. But for once, it&rsquo;s going to have to do the dirty work itself.</p>
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</div><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/handy-shows-everything-startups-do-wrong-2015-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/rocket-league-dlc-2015-7">The best game of the year is about to get much bigger</a></p> Handyhttp://www.businessinsider.com/books-steve-jobs-thought-you-should-read-2015-79 books that Steve Jobs thought everyone should readhttp://www.businessinsider.com/books-steve-jobs-thought-you-should-read-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 15:05:00 -0400Shana Lebowitz and Mike Nudelman
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Late Apple cofounder&nbsp;Steve Jobs spent a lifetime learning what it means to be human by reading books.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1">"The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts," Jobs once said.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1">Here, we've listed the books that had&nbsp;the biggest influence on Jobs and his work.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55b6a0392acae78a008ba7fd-1200-2225/bi_graphics_9 books that steve jobs thinks everyone should read.png" alt="BI_Graphics_9 books that Steve Jobs thinks everyone should read" data-mce-source="Mike Nudelman/Business Insider" /></p>
<p class="p18"><span class="s1">Here are the links to find each book:</span></p>
<p class="p18"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A73J6J6/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00A73J6J6&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=ZZBPFUNLDVWPVELS">"King Lear" by William Shakespeare</a></span></p>
<p class="p18"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0083DJVIS/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B0083DJVIS&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=H2OK4XVCGVVSQTH5">"Moby Dick" by Herman Melville</a></span></p>
<p class="p18"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EE1YB3S/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00EE1YB3S&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=WNEKEEV3M46EG7I7">"The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas" by Dylan Thomas</a></span></p>
<p class="p18"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005R9HK8O/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B005R9HK8O&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=UDAOKMXJ65QLSZ6Z">"Be Here Now" by Ram Dass</a></span></p>
<p class="p18"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003F3PLBW/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B003F3PLBW&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=DHKLNUE2W2CFM5U4">"Diet for a Small Planet" by Frances Moore Lappe</a></span></p>
<p class="p18"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0081AKCGS/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B0081AKCGS&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=BTR7MZH2UCQESHQU">"Mucusless Diet Healing System" by Arnold Ehret</a></span></p>
<p class="p18"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JW44IAI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00JW44IAI&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=43XDP5ODNQOU2J3Z">"Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda</a></span></p>
<p class="p18"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I8USOM0/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00I8USOM0&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=7GKBDBKVWYRZJHUO">"Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki</a></span></p>
<p class="p18"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1437150639&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=the+innovator%27s+dilemma">"The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton M. Christensen</a></span></p>
<p class="p18"><em><span class="s1">Drake Baer contributed research to this article.</span></em></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/9-books-to-read-if-you-want-to-be-a-billionaire-2015-6" >9 books to read if you want to be a billionaire</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/books-steve-jobs-thought-you-should-read-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-branson-public-speaking-tips-2015-7">Richard Branson hates public speaking — here's how he gets over it</a></p> Mike Nudelman/Business Insiderhttp://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-has-given-birth-to-a-bunch-of-enterprise-startups-2015-7Facebook has given birth to a bunch of startups who want to change how businesses use techhttp://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-has-given-birth-to-a-bunch-of-enterprise-startups-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 14:54:28 -0400Julie Bort
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/559a8e9c6bb3f73603804f03-958-719/mark-zuckerberg-484.jpg" alt="Mark Zuckerberg" data-mce-source="Robert Galbraith/Reuters" data-link="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZY5CKS7L&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1920&amp;RH=843#/SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZY5CKS7L&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1920&amp;RH=843&amp;PN=4&amp;POPUPPN=196&amp;POPUPIID=2C0BF1N6HCM6" /></p><p>Facebook makes nearly all of its money from&nbsp;ads. It's also begun&nbsp;investing in moonshot projects from virtual reality headsets to <a href="drones satellites and laser communication systems">drones and laser communication systems.</a></p>
<p><span>One area it doesn't talk about: the <span>$3.5 trillion enterprise tech market. That's how much money businesses spend on tech every year to run their companies and help employees do their jobs.&nbsp;</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Although Facebook did recently introduce an experiemental <a href="https://www.facebook.com/help/work">Facebook At Work</a> service which lets teams use Facebook to communicate and share stuff, it's not much of a&nbsp;focus for the company.</span></span></p>
<p>All of which might make it seem as if Facebook&nbsp;has been completely&nbsp;absent from that that $3.5 trillion market.</p>
<p>But it hasn't.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Facebook has actually helped cook up a whole bunch of startups that want to change the way enterprises use tech.</p>
<p>They were inspired by how Facebook uses technology to run its massive social network, often&nbsp;giving away&nbsp;the&nbsp;technology it invents for free, everything from data center hardware designs to databases.</p>
<p>Here's a look at some of the unusual enterprise startups from Facebook.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/13-year-old-girl-coder-wows-crowd-2015-7" >This 13-year-old programmer wowed 4,000 people with an inspiring keynote speech</a></strong></p>
<h3>Coolan</h3>
<img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/54f62717ecad04b65338ff4f-400-300/coolan.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>FB Alum: <strong>Amir Michael, Jonathan Heiliger</strong></p>
<p>Funding: Seed Round</p>
<p>Michael&nbsp;was previously hardware design manager and&nbsp;Heiliger<strong>&nbsp;</strong>as VP of infrastructure at FB, and they both played key roles in launching the company&rsquo;s Open Compute Project.</p>
<p>They&rsquo;re veterans of disrupting the data center, and together with Amir&rsquo;s brother Yoni, they founded <a href="http://www.coolan.com">Coolan</a>, a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ocp-launches-first-startup-2015-3">crowdsourced, analytics platform that provides insights</a> on server performance.</p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>Interana</h3>
<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/54d00c9c6bb3f73e1d1b7745-400-300/interana.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>Facebook alums: <strong>Bobby Johnson, Lior Abraham</strong></p>
<p>Funding: $28.2 million, total</p>
<p><span>Johnson</span> was a director of engineering at FB for six years, responsible for scaling the site from millions to billions of users.</p>
<p><span>Abraham</span> invented a specialized database called SCUBA while at Facebook. It's a visual analytics tool adopted by over half of the company&rsquo;s employees that lets Facebook see how Facebook's technology is performing in real time.</p>
<p>Together with<span>&nbsp;Johnson'</span>s wife Ann, they founded <a href="http://www.interana.com">Interana,</a> a self-service data analytics tool. Customers include Sony, Tinder, and Jive.</p></p>
<br/><br/><h3>SignalFX</h3>
<img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55ba6ea72acae732118bb6bd-400-300/signalfx.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>Facebook alum: <strong>Philip Liu</strong></p>
<p>Funding: $28.5 million, total</p>
<p><span>Liu</span> was a software architect at Facebook where he developed software that helped Facebook setup and monitor&nbsp;IT systems.</p>
<p>He went on to co-found <a href="https://signalfx.com/">SignalFX</a>&nbsp;that detects patterns about the health of the IT infrastructure. Yelp and Tapjoy are customers.</p></p>
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-has-given-birth-to-a-bunch-of-enterprise-startups-2015-7#/#hedvig-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/slacking-red-bull-backflip-sport-baylines-2015-6">People doing backflips on a two-inch wide strap is a real sport called slacklining</a></p> Robert Galbraith/Reutershttp://www.businessinsider.com/league-of-legends-and-team-liquid-video-game-2015-7League of Millions: Inside the video game phenomenon that's selling out global arenas and earning stars up to $1 millionhttp://www.businessinsider.com/league-of-legends-and-team-liquid-video-game-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 14:46:23 -0400Sam Rega
<p>Far more than an internet video game, "<a href="http://na.leagueoflegends.com/">League of Legends</a>" is a cultural phenomenon, a pastime that is deeply ingrained in the lives and lifestyle of millions of fans worldwide. It appeals across cultures and demographics, inspiring a passion and sense of community rarely matched in modern culture.</p>
<p>Twenty-seven million people play it every day. At peak hours, more than 7 million people are playing concurrently.</p>
<p>Not only do people play it themselves, they love to watch others play — including the top pro "<a href="http://na.lolesports.com/">League of Legends" (LoL) teams</a>, which span 4 continents and fill coliseums with fans.</p>
<p>BI Films presents Part 1 of its documentary series, "League of Millions," in which we meet the five young pros who make up <a href="http://www.teamliquidpro.com/">Team Liquid</a>, one of the leading North American LoL teams, in their quest to win the 2015 championship.</p>
<p><em>Director and Producer: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/sam-rega">Sam Rega</a></em></p>
<p><em>Editor: Josh Wolff</em></p>
<p><em>Production and Research: David Fang and Lauren Browning</em></p>
<p><em>Executive Producer: Diane Galligan</em></p>
<p><strong>Follow TI: </strong><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVLZmDKeT-mV4H3ToYXIFYg/feed">On YouTube</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/league-of-legends-and-team-liquid-video-game-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/rob-gough-lesson-from-beating-cancer-2015-7How beating cancer helped this 32-year old start several businesseshttp://www.businessinsider.com/rob-gough-lesson-from-beating-cancer-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 14:20:45 -0400Eugene Kim
<p class="p1"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/55bc4eaa2acae70f008bc3f4-578-434/rob gough.png" alt="Rob Gough" data-mce-source="Rob Gough" /></p><p>Life-changing moments often come when you least expect it.</p>
<p class="p2">For serial entrepreneur and investor Rob Gough, that moment came in his freshman year of college, when he was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer, called Ewing&rsquo;s.</p>
<p class="p2">Doctors told Gough that he only had a 30% chance of living, but that didn&rsquo;t let him lose his mindset.</p>
<p class="p2">&ldquo;There was never a second that I thought I was going to lose it,&rdquo; Gough told Business Insider.</p>
<p class="p2">Gough went through intense chemo therapy, which oftentimes left him in excruciating pain, unable to walk or eat for days. But after 17 months of treatment, Gough was able to fully recover and return to school.</p>
<p class="p2">Once he got back to school, Gough didn&rsquo;t waste anytime chasing his dream, which was running his own company.</p>
<p class="p2">&ldquo;Since I was a kid, I always wanted to run a business. When I turned 16, I wasn&rsquo;t really excited about getting a car &mdash; I was excited about being able to start a business,&rdquo; he said.</p>
<p class="p2">His first business was an online auction site called Bidaroo. Within five years, Bidaroo grew big enough to be able to sponsor an Indy 500 car for the whole season, and in 2009, he sold it to a private buyer.</p>
<p class="p2">In 2012, Gough launched another business called Eckim. It was a marketing company that owned two coupon sites, and in less than three years, he was able to sell it again &mdash; this time to a public company called Coupons.com for a hefty 8-figure sum.</p>
<p class="p2">&ldquo;Anything is possible. People just don&rsquo;t dream as big as they can go,&rdquo; he said.</p>
<p class="p2">Now, Gough has turned his attention to investing, putting his own cash into growing businesses. And recently he&rsquo;s made his first $500,000 investment in a vapor business called NEWhere.com, which sells premium e-cigarette and vapor products.&nbsp;Gough says NEWhere.com has doubled in size over the past year, and is expected to bring in over $10 million in sales this year.&nbsp;</p>
<p class="p2">Gough is still technically a Coupons.com employee, but he sees himself investing much more heavily in the future, potentially under his own investment firm.</p>
<p class="p2">&ldquo;In the future, I&rsquo;ll probably start a private equity firm,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;My whole goal is I want $1 billion, and I&rsquo;ll make it happen in the next 7 years.&rdquo;</p>
<p class="p2">But all financial aspirations aside, Gough says the most important lesson he&rsquo;s learned through all this is rather simple: shoot for the stars.</p>
<p class="p2">&ldquo;It takes the same amount of time and effort to build a $10 million business as it does a $1 billion business &mdash; it&rsquo;s the same problems, same process, same headache,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;People just don&rsquo;t think about scalability. You can go way bigger and really have whatever you want.&rdquo;</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/kleiner-perkins-new-app-office-hours-2015-7" >A new app lets anyone with a startup idea instantly chat with investors at VC firm Kleiner Perkins</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/rob-gough-lesson-from-beating-cancer-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/slacking-red-bull-backflip-sport-baylines-2015-6">People doing backflips on a two-inch wide strap is a real sport called slacklining</a></p> Rob Goughhttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-cities-are-learning-from-barcelonas-development-into-a-smart-city-2015-7The 'smart' way Barcelona is cutting costs and improving the quality of lifehttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-cities-are-learning-from-barcelonas-development-into-a-smart-city-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 14:15:00 -0400Jonathan Camhi
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55b11a372acae732118b91b6-2357-1743/bii_citiesiotdeviceinstalledbase.png" alt="bii_citiesiotdeviceinstalledbase" data-mce-source="BI Intelligence" /></p><p></p>
<p>Barcelona was honored as the world's smartest city this year, beating out London, Singapore, and New York in&nbsp;connected infrastructure, citizen engagement, technological capability, and use of open data sources.</p>
<p>Barcelona's pilot program, which launched in 2011, has since developed into 22 different programs encompassing more than 200 projects and implementations under the umbrella of the city&rsquo;s Municipal Institute of Information Technology, the department that handles the city's IT environment.&nbsp;Many cities are already connecting their infrastructure to&nbsp;IoT devices like sensors and smart meters. But few cities are as far along in that effort as Barcelona.&nbsp;</p>
<p>In a new report, BI Intelligence examines how other municipalities can learn from Barcelona&rsquo;s development into a smart city, how cities&rsquo; investments in IoT technologies will grow over time, and how those investments will impact urban economies worldwide.</p>
<p><strong><a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');">Access The Reports By Signing Up For A Risk-Free Trial Membership Today &gt;&gt;</a></strong></p>
<p>Here are some of the key findings from the report:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');"><strong>IoT deployments will create $421 billion in economic value for cities worldwide in 2019.</strong> </a>That economic value will be derived from revenues from IoT device&nbsp;installations and sales&nbsp;and savings from efficiency gains in city services.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');"><strong>Globally, cities&rsquo; investments in IoT technologies will increase by $97 billion between 2015-2019.</strong></a> This will make up the bulk of government investment in IoT technologies, dwarfing the amount of money spent on other government IoT use cases like military drones and robots.&nbsp;</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');"><strong>The number of IoT devices installed in cities will will increase by more than 5 billion in the next four years</strong></a>, creating a massive opportunity for IoT hardware manufacturers and software vendors.</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong><a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');">IoT technologies will deliver a broad range of benefits for cities</a></strong> including reducing traffic congestion and air pollution, improving public safety, and providing new ways for governments to interact with their citizens.</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In this report we will also:</span><br /><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"></span></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');">Define the difference between connected vs smart cities.</a></li>
<li><a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');">Identify key challenges for municipalities in developing smart cities and illustrate how some cities are already solving those obstacles.</a></li>
<li><a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');">Provide key takeaways from Barcelona&rsquo;s IoT strategy, which has earned it recognition as the world&rsquo;s smartest city.&nbsp;</a></li>
<li><a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');">Illustrate how the benefits of connecting legacy infrastructure can be magnified through data aggregation and analysis.</a></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>To access the full report from BI Intelligence,&nbsp;</strong><strong>sign up for a&nbsp;14-day&nbsp;<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');">trial here</a>. Members also gain access to&nbsp;<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');">new in-depth reports </a>and&nbsp;<a href="https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/the-smart-city-forecasts-definitions-and-how-barcelona-is-leading-the-way-2015-7?utm_source=House&amp;utm_medium=Edit&amp;utm_term=IoT-SmartCity-7-31-15&amp;utm_content=link&amp;utm_campaign=BIIIoT" onclick="this.href = this.href + '-' + window.location.search.substr(1).replace(/\&amp;|\=/g, '-');">hundreds of charts</a></strong><strong>&nbsp;on the digital industry</strong><strong>.</strong></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-cities-are-learning-from-barcelonas-development-into-a-smart-city-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> BI Intelligencehttp://www.businessinsider.com/new-pluto-photos-reveal-evidence-of-earth-like-glaciers-on-its-surface-2015-7The sharpest photos of Pluto were just released and point to why there is a mysterious heart on its surfacehttp://www.businessinsider.com/new-pluto-photos-reveal-evidence-of-earth-like-glaciers-on-its-surface-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 14:00:00 -0400Jessica Orwig
<p>Today, NASA's New Horizons team — which sent the first spacecraft in history to <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-horizons-just-phoned-home-and-is-in-good-condition-2015-7">fly over Pluto last week</a> — revealed the <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-discovers-flowing-ices-on-pluto">latest set of Pluto mind-blowing images</a> that came with some big surprsies and new mysteries.</p>
<p>Right now, the team is studying the most iconic feature on Pluto — the heart-shaped region informally called "Tombaugh Regio" shown in the lower right portion of Pluto in this high-resolution photo below:</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55b28979371d22a40e8b95ec-1873-932/screen%20shot%202015-07-24%20at%202.10.30%20pm.png" alt="pluto" data-mce-source="NASA">This is the sharpest image yet of the dwarf planet as a whole that we've seen, and it reveals something that scientists hadn't been able to observe before: that the left lobe of Tombough Regio looks very different from the right lobe. It's more complete and colored-in.</p>
<p>Here's a close-up. These color photos reveal what Pluto would look like to the naked eye. They're created by <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/we-spoke-with-the-guy-who-processes-amazing-pluto-photos-2015-7">combining images</a> taken by the <a href="http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Spacecraft/Payload.php">Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera</a> with information collected by the Ralph instrument.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55b2a06e2acae700448b766b-1200-600/pluto.jpg" alt="pluto" data-mce-source="NASA">And it's this latest find that scientists have used to provide the first prediction of what is generating the shape of Tombough Regio:</p>
<p>"Our interpretation is that material in the right lobe — the source for that material — is coming from the western [or left] lobe," said Alan Stern, who is the New Horizons principal investigator, during the NASA television announcement today.</p>
<p>Basically, NASA believes that there is some process on Pluto — possibly wind — that is transporting material from the left lobe across the surface and is then landing farther east to form the right lobe. This "mind-blowing" — as Stern puts it — false-color image highlights the difference between the two lobes nicely:</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55b29923371d2277018b97ca-1200-830/nh-pluto-in-false-color.jpg" alt="pluto" data-mce-source="NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI">The team still suspects that the ligh-coloring of the feature could be coming from nitrogen snow, Stern added.</p>
<p class="p1">What's even more exciting are the latest close-up shots of the region informally called "Sputnik Planum," which is a smaller section toward the bottom of the Pluto's heart, carved out below. Sputnik Planum is about the size of Texas but it's completely different and could even have Earth-like glaciers:</p>
<p class="p1"><img class="full" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/55b28d79371d222e008b98c4-1191-630/screen%20shot%202015-07-24%20at%203.09.18%20pm.png" alt="Screen Shot 2015 07 24 at 3.09.18 PM" data-mce-source="NASA">Right now, the temperatures on Pluto's surface are around -380F which are too cold for water ice to flow. But nitrogen ice will melt at much colder temperature, -346 degrees F, which means it could go from a solid to a liquid on Pluto during warmer seasons.</p>
<p class="p1">As a result, this suggests evidence of glacier-like activity on Pluto's surface, the team reported. Geological activity was something the scientists had hoped to find but certainly were not expecting.</p>
<p class="p1">By zooming into that region on Pluto, the scientists pointed out clear evidence for this glacier-like activity, where the flat plains slam up against more rugged terrain. It appears that nitrogen could be flowing between the two different types of features, indicated by the patterns in the photo below:</p>
<p class="p1"><img class="full" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/55b28cdc371d2278018b96ae-1200-706/screen%20shot%202015-07-24%20at%202.29.40%20pm.png" alt="pluto" data-mce-source="NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI">"On Pluto, the kind of ices we think make up the planet — nitrogen ice, carbon monoxide ice — they will flow in the same way that glaciers do on Earth," said William McKinnon, who is the New Horizons co-investigator during the announcement. "To see evidence of recent geological activity is simply a dream come true."</p>
<p class="p1">(By recent, McKinnon means within the last tens of millions of years, which is remarkable recent compared to the age of our solar system — 4 billion years.)</p>
<p class="p1">And as you move farther south toward the bottom of Sputnik Planum, there's a far more diverse surface as the plains meet some of Pluto's high mountain ranges. Here you can see the first two mountain ranges ever discovered on Pluto: Norgay Montes — similar in height to the Appalachian Mountains — on the right and Hillary Montes — similar to the Rocky Mountains — on the left.</p>
<p class="p1"><img class="full" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/55b28ec9371d222e008b98d4-1200-735/screen%20shot%202015-07-24%20at%202.33.51%20pm.png" alt="Screen Shot 2015 07 24 at 2.33.51 PM" data-mce-source="NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI">The Norgay mountains were discovered just a few days ago and appear to be made of similar material as the Hillary mountains, which the team suspect could be water in ice form. Here's a close up of the Norgay mountains:</p>
<p class="p1"><img class="full" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55b29ab26bb3f77a0205babb-1200-1198/nh-pluto-mountain-range-1.png" alt="pluto" data-mce-source="NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI">But perhaps the most astounding and mysterious find was what the team recently learned about Pluto's atmosphere.</p>
<p class="p1">The atmosphere has a haze that stretches to as high as 100 miles above the dwarf planet's surface — 5 times higher than what the scientists were expecting.</p>
<p class="p1">After flying by Pluto, the spacecraft turned around and snapped a photo of Pluto as it eclipsed the sun, which highlights the haze as a bright ring around the tiny world:</p>
<p class="p1"><img class="full" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55b29ab369bedd257705bab0-1200-675/nh_01_stern_05_pluto_hazenew-1.jpg" alt="pluto" data-mce-source="NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI">According to Michael Summers, who is the New Horizons co-investigator at George Mason, this haze likely generates hydrocarbon compounds that are responsible for Pluto's red color.</p>
<p class="p1">"We don't understand why there's a hazy layer up to 100 miles altitude," Summer said. "It's a mystery that is one of the things we'll have to sort out in the coming days."</p>
<p class="p1">This latest data set adds to the library of information the New Horizons team is building on Pluto. And there's still a lot more to go. About 96% of the information that the New Horizons spacecraft has collected is still on board, and has not yet been transmitted to Earth.</p>
<p>Here's a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AbiygSo478&amp;index=2&amp;list=PLiuUQ9asub3TI3pYcXyNduiIdK2UtVhln">computer-simulated video</a> of how it would look to fly over Pluto:</p>
<p><div>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0AbiygSo478?list=PLiuUQ9asub3TI3pYcXyNduiIdK2UtVhln" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></p>
<p class="embed-spacer"> </p><p><strong>CHECK OUT:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-just-discovered-an-earth-like-planet-2015-7" >NASA just discovered 'Earth 2.0'</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-does-a-mission-to-pluto-cost-2015-7" >Here's how much a mission to Pluto costs</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-pluto-photos-reveal-evidence-of-earth-like-glaciers-on-its-surface-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-nye-nasa-scientists-react-new-horizons-pluto-2015-7">Bill Nye and NASA scientists react to seeing a clear picture of Pluto for the first time</a></p> NASAhttp://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-russias-futuristic-new-tram-2015-1Big, beautiful photos of Russia's tram of the futurehttp://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-russias-futuristic-new-tram-2015-1
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 13:58:22 -0400Steven Tweedie
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/55bbf1bc371d22dd2e8bad90-1100-550/18-141.jpg" alt="Russian One Tram" data-mce-source="Ilya Varlamov" /></p><p>The Russian One is a new commuter tram that looks like something from a sci-fi film.</p>
<p>The futuristic tram features LED cabin lighting, felt-covered sofas, wooden handrails, and sliding glass doors that operate by touchscreen.</p>
<p>Luckily, photographer <a href="http://varlamov.me/ru/novyy-russkiy-tramvay">Ilya Varlamov</a> was able to snap some pictures of the new Russian One prototype, right from the showroom floor.</p>
<p><em>Note: All photos shown are used with permission.</em></p><h3>The Russia One is covered in stunning glass paneling.</h3>
<img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/53bd59b16bb3f7c3648b4570-400-300/the-russia-one-is-covered-in-stunning-glass-paneling.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>This is the tram's designer, Alexei Maslov.</h3>
<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/53bd598cecad043857b89f2d-400-300/this-is-the-trams-designer-alexei-maslov.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>The interior of the tram is incredibly beautiful.</h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/53bd5663eab8ea807f61770e-400-300/the-interior-of-the-tram-is-incredibly-beautiful.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-russias-futuristic-new-tram-2015-1#the-overhead-led-mood-lighting-keeps-the-interior-quite-bright-in-the-morning-and-dim-at-night-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> Ilya Varlamovhttp://www.techinsider.io/architect-made-a-beer-bottle-house-2015-7An architect figured out a brilliant way to reuse thousands of empty beer bottleshttp://www.techinsider.io/architect-made-a-beer-bottle-house-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 13:57:00 -0400Shivam Saini
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/55be2969dd089564778b4690-3256-2442/rtx1i3ti.jpg" alt="RTX1I3TI" border="0" data-mce-source="China Stringers Network / Reuters" /></p><p>Next time you're about to dump beer bottles in the recycling bin, consider&nbsp;that they could be used to make a house instead.</p>
<p>Armed with $11,000 and 8,500 discarded&nbsp;beer bottles,&nbsp;<span>Chinese architect Li Rongjun spent over&nbsp;four months using bottles to&nbsp;</span><span>build the second floor of his two-story house in&nbsp;Chongqing<em>,&nbsp;</em>China, according to <a href="http://society.people.com.cn/n/2015/0627/c136657-27217073.html">Chinese media</a>.</span></p>
<p>At least 40 layers of beer bottles hold the top level&nbsp;together. The<span>&nbsp;ground floor, on the other hand, is built with mud and brick. The entire house spans 312&nbsp;square feet, with&nbsp;each floor rising&nbsp;nine feet high.</span></p>
<p>Li plans to use the beer bottle section of his home as an office.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55be2969dd089564778b4691-2645-1984/rtx1i3tk.jpg" alt="RTX1I3TK" border="0" data-mce-source="China Stringers Network / Getty Images" /></p>
<p><span>But he might want to be careful. One architect&nbsp;<a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/trending/2015-06/28/content_21125375.htm">told</a><span> China Daily that the structure is at risk of collapsing since the top level "has no load bearing wall and the weight the beer bottles could carry is limited."</span></span></p>
<p><span><img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/55be2969dd089564778b4692-3100-2325/rtx1i3tj.jpg" alt="RTX1I3TJ" border="0" data-mce-source="Reuters" /></span></p>
<p><span>The idea of turning beer bottles into building material isn't new.&nbsp;</span><span>In the 1960s, Dutch brewing giant&nbsp;Heineken made beer bottles&nbsp;<a href="http://archinect.com/news/article/65009">look like bricks</a> so that they could be used for affordable housing later.&nbsp;<span>The World Bottles &mdash; or WOBO, as they were called &mdash; could&nbsp;interlock&nbsp;with each other&nbsp;when laid horizontally. But the&nbsp;concept was dismissed as being too impractical. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</span></p>
<p><span>Given&nbsp;Li's creation, imagining beer&nbsp;bottles as glass bricks doesn't seem like such a far-fetched&nbsp;idea&nbsp;<span>&mdash;&nbsp;as long as the house doesn't collapse, that is.</span></span></p><p><a href="http://www.techinsider.io/architect-made-a-beer-bottle-house-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/body-language-tricks-become-likable-2015-5">5 ways to change your body language to make people like you</a></p> China Stringers Network / Reutershttp://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-the-windows-start-button-2015-7The weird history of the Windows Start buttonhttp://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-the-windows-start-button-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 13:50:36 -0400Matt Weinberger
<p>Original story here:&nbsp;http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-the-windows-start-button-2015-7</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-the-windows-start-button-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/legend-trailer-with-tom-hardy-2015-6">Tom Hardy makes a crazy transformation playing identical twins in this new gangster movie</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/even-the-lead-singer-of-talking-heads-has-no-idea-how-apples-music-royalty-payments-work-2015-8Even the lead singer of Talking Heads has no idea how Apple's music royalty payments workhttp://www.businessinsider.com/even-the-lead-singer-of-talking-heads-has-no-idea-how-apples-music-royalty-payments-work-2015-8
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 13:33:18 -0400Alexei Oreskovic
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/55be51d1371d22dd2e8baf3c-594-414/byrne.jpg" alt="Byrne" data-mce-source="Photo by KMazur/WireImage" />If the world needed any more proof of&nbsp;how absurdly convoluted the streaming music business is, the former frontman of the legendary band Talking Heads has now provided it. </span></p>
<p class="p1">It seems that even David Byrne, a music industry veteran who was the lead singer of the critically-acclaimed Talking Heads, is as much in the dark as everyone else about some of the royalty rates that Apple and other streaming services pay artists when their songs get played.</p>
<p class="p1">In an <a href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/open-the-music-industrys-black-box.html?referrer=&amp;_r=0">op-ed in the New York Times</a>, Byrne says that it&rsquo;s time for the record labels and streaming services to open up the &ldquo;black box&rdquo; and make clear exactly &ldquo;how they share the wealth generated by music.&rdquo;</p>
<p class="p1">The music industry is a notoriously difficult business to understand, with byzantine, private contracts, deals and licenses governing how much musicians get paid.&nbsp; The issue has been thrust in the spotlight as new Internet streaming music services increasingly replace digital downloads, CDs and other forms of recorded music sales.</p>
<p class="p1">New streaming music services such as Apple Music, Spotify and Google&rsquo;s YouTube give consumers instant access to unprecedented amount of music right at their fingertips, but the innovation has not translated into a golden age for musicians.</p>
<p class="p1">&ldquo;Tales of popular artists (as popular as Pharrell Williams) who received paltry royalty checks for songs that streamed thousands or even millions of times (like &ldquo;Happy&rdquo;) on Pandora or Spotify are common,&rdquo; write Byrne. For lesser-known artists, the situation is even worse, he says.</p>
<p class="p1">Musicians appeared to have won an important battle in June when <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-will-pay-artists-during-3-month-apple-music-trial-2015-6">Taylor Swift forced Apple to back off a plan</a> to not pay royalties to artists during a free three month trial period of its new streaming music service.</p>
<p class="p1">But Byrne notes that it&rsquo;s still not clear how much Apple agreed to pay or how they will determine the rate. Even people in the industry like Byrne don&rsquo;t know:</p>
<p class="p1" style="padding-left: 30px;">I asked Apple Music to explain the calculation of royalties for the trial period. They said they disclosed that only to copyright owners (that is, the labels). I have my own label and own the copyright on some of my albums, but when I turned to my distributor, the response was, &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t see the deal, but you could have your lawyer call our lawyer and we might answer some questions."</p>
<p class="p1">Byrne didn&rsquo;t get much more detail when he asked YouTube similar questions.</p>
<p class="p1" style="padding-left: 30px;">I asked YouTube how ad revenue from videos that contain music is shared (which should be an incredibly basic question). They responded that they didn&rsquo;t share exact numbers, but said that YouTube&rsquo;s cut was &ldquo;less than half.&rdquo; An industry source (who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the information) told me that the breakdown is roughly 50 percent to YouTube, 35 percent to the owner of the master recording and 15 percent to the publisher.</p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s2">The first step towards creating a more </span><span class="s1">equitable business model for everyone in the music industry is to open up the black box and provide more information, in Byrne&rsquo;s view.</span><br /><span class="s1"></span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-will-pay-artists-during-3-month-apple-music-trial-2015-6" >Apple caves to Taylor Swift and decides to pay artists during its 3-month Apple Music customer trial period</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/even-the-lead-singer-of-talking-heads-has-no-idea-how-apples-music-royalty-payments-work-2015-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sharks-spotted-coast-england-2015-7">People were baffled by 50 sharks circling in shallow waters off the English coast</a></p> Photo by KMazur/WireImagehttp://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-arizonas-titan-ii-missile-museum-2015-7Here's the insanely complicated process needed to launch the most powerful nuclear warheadhttp://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-arizonas-titan-ii-missile-museum-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 13:00:00 -0400Jessica Orwig
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55b7c7002acae716008bac40-1920-1080/screen%20shot%202015-07-28%20at%201.53.01%20pm.png" alt="Screen Shot 2015 07 28 at 1.53.01 PM" data-mce-source="Veritasium on YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDIENvBTgw&amp;feature=em-subs_digest-ctrl"></p><p>At the height of the Cold War, America's underground was rife with dozens of hidden nuclear-missile units.</p>
<p>Some of these systems contained Titan II missiles, which carried the largest single nuclear warhead of any missile <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercontinental_ballistic_missile">of its kind</a> before or since.</p>
<p>Titan II was a guided ballistic missile that was also the largest, most powerful nuclear weapons system ever deployed in the US. And it served one purpose: deterrence.</p>
<p>"The idea behind Titan II was to instill enough fear in the mind of the enemy to cause them to think twice about launching an attack against us," Chuck Penson, the archivist and historian at the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, Arizona, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDIENvBTgw&amp;feature=em-subs_digest-ctrl">told Derek Muller</a>, the host of the YouTube channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium">Varitasium</a>.</p>
<p>In his latest Varitasium episode, Muller takes us inside an underground base where one of these monster Titan II missiles still stands, and he learns about the insanely complicated steps it would have taken to actually launch this terrifying piece of human engineering in the event of an attack.</p>
<p>Inside the missile was a weapon with incredibly destructive potential — 650 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.</p>
<p>Therefore, it's no surprise that on the entry door into the silo, where the Titan II missile stands, there is a sign that reads "CAUTION."</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55b7ceb2371d2254008ba7b4-1920-1080/missile2.jpg" alt="missile2" data-mce-source="Veritasium on YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDIENvBTgw&amp;feature=em-subs_digest-ctrl">Though the Titan II missile still stands, it no longer carries its dangerous cargo.</p>
<p>Among the more interesting features in the silo are the soundproof panels covering the walls. Without these panels to absorb the sound during a launch, the energy from the sound waves would actually shake the missile to pieces before it could lift off.</p>
<p>The Titan Missile Museum in Arizona, where this empty missile is located, includes the original site for one of the 54 underground silos across the country where deterrent missiles, such as Titan II, were hidden during the late 1950s and mid-'60s.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/55b7ced5371d2279018ba70c-1914-917/missile1.jpg" alt="missile1" data-mce-source="Veritasium on YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDIENvBTgw&amp;feature=em-subs_digest-ctrl">The control center with all of the gadgets, switches, and buttons — including those that would initiate a launch — is located far from the missile, beyond a series of long underground tunnels.</p>
<p>Another benefit, besides secrecy, to an underground launch site was that if the enemy successfully detonated a bomb in the US, the site's occupants would be shielded from the radiation as long as their base was not destroyed in the attack.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55b7cef1371d22a40e8ba557-1920-1080/screen%20shot%202015-07-28%20at%201.54.14%20pm.png" alt="Screen Shot 2015 07 28 at 1.54.14 PM" data-mce-source="Varitasium on YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDIENvBTgw&amp;feature=em-subs_digest-ctrl">Once in the control room, Penson takes Muller through the multistep process of what it would have been like to launch a Titan II missile. First, the speakers in the room sound an alarm that is followed by a message with a series of random numbers and words.</p>
<p>This message should have reached them only if the US president had ordered it.</p>
<p>Everyone in the room copies down the message and compares notes, and if they agree on what they heard, then they go to a red safe — which is locked, of course — containing a series of what Penson calls "authentication cards."</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/55b7cf492acae72c008bacca-1920-1080/missile3.jpg" alt="missile3" data-mce-source="Veritasium on YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDIENvBTgw&amp;feature=em-subs_digest-ctrl">Each card contains two letters. If one of the cards has the two-letter combination that matches the first two letters in the secret message transmitted through the speakers, then the control room is officially "go" for launch.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55b7cf182acae7cc3f8b8430-1920-1080/screen%20shot%202015-07-28%20at%201.55.10%20pm.png" alt="Screen Shot 2015 07 28 at 1.55.10 PM" data-mce-source="Varitasium on YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDIENvBTgw&amp;feature=em-subs_digest-ctrl">After that, you just have one more six-letter code and two keys separating you from World War III. But the six-letter code is on a wheel with 17 million possible combinations, and the key slots are far enough apart that you must have two people turning them at exactly the same time.</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55b7d71a371d2279018ba74e-1920-1080/screen%20shot%202015-07-28%20at%201.55.49%20pm.png" alt="Screen Shot 2015 07 28 at 1.55.49 PM" data-mce-source="Vertasium on YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDIENvBTgw&amp;feature=em-subs_digest-ctrl"></p>
<p>After you insert the six-letter code, the commander counts down to the final key turn. The commander and his partner hold the keys down for five seconds, and then a terrifying green light illuminates the "Ready to Launch" panel.</p>
<p>"For all intensive purposes that should say, 'Welcome to World War III,' because that's pretty much what it boils down to," Penson said. "When you turn the key you are committed. There is no 'oops' switch."</p>
<p><img class="full" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55b7d844371d22462c8b8553-1920-1080/screen%20shot%202015-07-28%20at%201.56.27%20pm.png" alt="Screen Shot 2015 07 28 at 1.56.27 PM" data-mce-source="Veritasium on YouTube" data-link="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDIENvBTgw&amp;feature=em-subs_digest-ctrl"> These precautions were taken to prevent a single person from launching a missile. After all, people can get pretty crazy and paranoid during times of war.</p>
<p>Though Titan II was never launched to prevent an attack on US soil, several of these missiles were launched. In fact, some were used to launch American manned missions through NASA's Gemini program to space.</p>
<p>Check out Muller's video below or on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDIENvBTgw&amp;feature=em-subs_digest-ctrl">YouTube</a>:</p>
<p><div>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/knDIENvBTgw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></p><p><strong>CHECK OUT:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/real-places-the-main-character-in-the-martian-went-on-mars-2015-7" >All of the beautiful locations in Matt Damon's new thriller about Mars are real — here are the epic photos that prove it</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/this-bomb-may-be-the-most-dangerous-in-us-arsenal-2015-7" >This new nuclear-armed US bomb may be the most dangerous weapon in America's arsenal</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-the-arizonas-titan-ii-missile-museum-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/space-program-rocket-launch-failures-footage-nasa-2015-3">14 extraordinary rocket test failures that paved the way for NASA's space program</a></p> Veritasium on YouTubehttp://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-has-a-secret-weapon-to-compete-with-other-carmakers-2015-7Tesla has a secret weapon to compete with other carmakers (tsla)http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-has-a-secret-weapon-to-compete-with-other-carmakers-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 12:15:59 -0400Matthew DeBord
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/54384149eab8eade7f59960e-1200-798/456966956.jpg" alt="Tesla D Speed" data-mce-source="Mark Ralston/AFP" /></p><p>Tesla is special. It excites people about its cars in ways that other carmakers can only envy.</p>
<p>There are other car brands that achieve this. But they have names like "Ferrari," "Lamborghini," "Pagani," "McLaren," and "Porsche." People put posters of the hottest rides these automakers make on their bedroom walls. They're dream machines, and they look the part.</p>
<p>And consequently the Ferraris and Lamborghinis of the world are compelled to make their sexiest and most exciting cars stand out. This is not subtle styling, but that isn't what the customer expects if they're spending more than $1 million:</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/51364fb0eab8ea573000000d-1500-1137/front aperto-1.jpg" alt="ferrari laferrari red small size" data-mce-source="Ferrari" /></p>
<p>Over-the-top doesn't even begin to describe it:</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/54efa0d369bedd6452d8fa88-5616-3744/geneva15_mclaren p1 gtr_06.jpg" alt="McLaren P1 GTR" data-mce-source="McLaren" /></p>
<p>Supercars, it goes without saying, are supposed to be super. If you want to play in the rarefied fields of 0-60 in under three seconds, you need to follow the leaders.</p>
<p>Unless you're Tesla.</p>
<p>Tesla is currently building one car in one factory. It's a relatively luxurious sedan. It's elegantly styled. But it's hardly wild and crazy:</p>
<p><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/54da7f11eab8ea84515ad256-1428-667/screen shot 2015-02-10 at 4.57.27 pm.png" alt="Tesla Model S " data-mce-source="Tesla" /></p>
<p>But the most high-performance version, the P90D with "Ludicrous Mode," can do 0-60 mph in 2.8 seconds. Numerous supercars are slower. Very few are faster.</p>
<p>The P90D, Ludicrous-equipped, can be had for less than $150,000.</p>
<p>Compare that with a McLaren P1 at $1.2 million.</p>
<p>McLaren and Ferrari build very few cars each year, so they're justified in charging staggering sums for the privileges of ownership. And they do have to spend a lot to develop exotic body styles and high-horsepower engines. But the price is also part of the marketing. A supercar needs to be superexpensive.</p>
<p>Tesla, meanwhile, builds a fairly simple vehicle. The Model S consists of four main parts: the chassis, the electric drivetrain, the battery pack, and the in-car interface, the software systems that govern the car's functions. Pricing is certainly at the upper levels of the "everyday" auto world, in the same ballpark as BMW, Audi, and Mercedes. But it's hundred of thousands less than the exotics that the Model S can match for performance.</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5437bca4eab8eab870e5d670-1200-799/456967714-1.jpg" alt="Tesla D Getty 2" data-mce-source="Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images" /></p>
<p>This is a bigger deal than it might seem.</p>
<p>Here's why. Supercar ownership is something of a burden. It's been said that the two best days of your life as a Ferrari owner are when you take delivery of the car and when you sell it. Driving a Lamborghini Aventador around the broken asphalt thoroughfares of a major American metropolis is a nerve-jangling affair. Very fast and very expensive cars are very cool for short burst on open freeways. That acceleration! That sound! But traffic invariably appears and kills the party.</p>
<p>The Model S, by contrast, is no burden all. It can quite competently imitate a classic highway cruiser. It can be equipped to seat seven. It has a back seat. There's room for luggage. In a lot of ways, it's really a blisteringly fast Buick.</p>
<p><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/51f8265eeab8eabd53000005-960-640/2013-tesla-model-s_100432932_l.jpg" alt="2013 tesla model s" data-mce-source="Green Car Reports" data-link="http://images.thecarconnection.com/lrg/2013-tesla-model-s_100432932_l.jpg" /></p>
<p>The performance has been one of the genuine surprises of the Model S story. Tesla entered the auto business with a snazzy car, the Roadster, that was <em>supposed</em> to be fast &mdash; the goal was to prove that electric cars didn't need to be glorified golf carts. The assumption was that the Model S would be a more stately and domesticated vehicle, a precursor to Tesla's assault on the mass market.</p>
<p>But over time it became evident that the particular characteristics of electric motors meant that the Model S could achieve some stunning numbers without the company needing to do much on the car's basic architecture. They basically added small spoiler to some of the higher-performance trim levels. Zowie!</p>
<p>It was the value add to end all value adds. The car of the future, powered by electrons, designed and built in Silicon Valley, was <em>a four-door Ferrari!</em></p>
<p>At a tenth of the price.</p>
<p>Ultimately, this is the greatest frosting anyone ever put on an already delicious automotive cake. You can have a beautiful, luxurious, virtuous, and futuristic car. And it can deliver mind-bending speed. The 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year can do it all. And it can travel upward of 300 miles on a single charge. Impressive.</p>
<p><img src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/50c8c1dbeab8ea1c03000015-830-505/screen shot 2012-12-12 at 12.40.49 pm.png" alt="tesla model s burnout" data-mce-source="Road &amp; track / YouTube" data-link="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=QPzna3p3P5s" /></p>
<p>The supercar market and the run-of-the-mill luxury market are separated by a vast gulf. It takes a lot of convince a customer to upgrade from, say, a BMW M4, an incredibly powerful and exciting car that goes for around $100,000, to a idiosyncratic supercar with seating for 1.5 humans and the ground clearance of a boa constrictor with its stomach sucked in.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/541c78356bb3f7dc6779747e-5616-3744/img_8781-2.jpg" alt="Gotham Dream Cars-20" data-mce-source="Gotham Dream Cars" /></p>
<p>You might ask yourself, "Do I really need to spend the extra million to be thrilled beyond speech four times a year under ideal conditions, but with no place for my golf clubs much less a gym bag?" You have to be very passionate about supercar ownership. You have to be something of a zealot in exchange for the wowser velocity.</p>
<p>With a Tesla p90D, however, the heroics are ... just ... there. Sort of like Clark Kent. He's got the costume under his suit. If he needs to, he can fly.</p>
<p>Tesla didn't set out to sell a supercar. It was only with the arrival of the P85D last year that it dawned on us all that the Model S could do some amazing things in a straight line. But now with the advent of Ludicrous Mode, the Model S can be thought of as a save-the-planet supercar alternative, quite easily.</p>
<p>That's a secret weapon. Although maybe not so secret anymore.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-reaction-to-teslas-ludicrous-mode-is-insane-2015-7" >The reaction to Tesla's 'Ludicrous Mode' is insane</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-has-a-secret-weapon-to-compete-with-other-carmakers-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-struck-lightning-storm-ohio-2015-6">Watch this Tesla get struck by lightning</a></p> Mark Ralston/AFPhttp://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-rules-2015-7Facebook is the undisputed king of the tech industry now (FB)http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-rules-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 11:27:22 -0400Matt Rosoff
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/559d5280eab8ea1a19eccddb-865-649/mark-zuckerberg-486.jpg" alt="Mark Zuckerberg" data-mce-source="Robert Galbraith/Reuters" data-link="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZY5CKS7L&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1920&amp;RH=843#/SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZY5CKS7L&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1920&amp;RH=843&amp;PN=4&amp;POPUPPN=196&amp;POPUPIID=2C0BF1N6HCM6" /></p><p>Facebook is on top.</p>
<p>No other tech company is executing so well across so many areas at once &mdash; from product development to business management to public relations.</p>
<p>Take a look:</p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">Users are addicted. </strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Facebook has more than 968 million active daily users, the company said on its </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-q2-earnings-2015-7">earnings call this week</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Let's put that another way so it sinks in. Nearly </span><em style="line-height: 1.5em;">1 billion people</em><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&nbsp;&mdash; one out of </span><em style="line-height: 1.5em;">every seven people on planet Earth</em><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> &mdash; checks Facebook </span><em style="line-height: 1.5em;">every day.</em><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> And these users aren't just conducting a search query or two; they're spending more than 46 minutes per day on the site. </span></p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">More users are coming aboard every day. </strong>Facebook's monthly-active-user count increased 13% from last year. That's not a big percentage, but it's starting from an absolutely enormous base and went from 1.32 billion users to 1.49 billion users. Another way of looking at it is that Facebook added 173 million new users since last year. That's greater than the population of Germany and the UK combined.</p>
<p><strong>It's already planning for the day when current internet users are saturated. </strong>CEO Mark Zuckerberg portrays the Facebook-funded Internet.org as a way to bring internet access to the next billion people who don't have it today, but this isn't just for charitable purposes. The more people who are online, the more people can use Facebook. That's how 1.49 billion becomes 3 billion. Or 5 billion. And it's creating some really cool technology &mdash; like this <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-building-internet-planes-lasers-2015-7">internet-beaming plane and these communication lasers</a>&nbsp;&mdash; to get there.</p>
<p><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">The company has managed revenue growth incredibly well since going public. </strong> Take a look at this chart:</p>
<p><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/55ba51052acae711008bb7d1-1200-900/073015-cotd.jpg" alt="073015 cotd" data-mce-source="Statista and Facebook" /></p>
<p>When Facebook went public in spring 2012, investors could look at the past few years' performance and see a fast-growing company. At that time, Facebook had no mobile-advertising business. It started selling mobile ads that same quarter.</p>
<p>Since then, the businesses that Facebook used to rely on have gone flat &mdash; but mobile advertising has grown in a perfectly up-and-to-the-right trajectory. All of Facebook's revenue growth since its IPO has been in an area that didn't exist when it filed to go public.</p>
<p>Business management!</p>
<p><strong>Facebook has multiple other revenue streams it's just waiting to tap. </strong>Facebook just started selling self-service, targeted ads &mdash; the kind Google made famous for search &mdash; on Instagram. Analysts predict it will be a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/emarketer-instagram-mobile-ad-revenue-forecast-2015-7">billion-dollar business</a> in the next couple of years.</p>
<p>Facebook hasn't even started to monetize its messaging products, Messenger and WhatsApp, which are used by more than a billion people combined, but CEO <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-plan-to-monetize-messenger-2015-7">Mark Zuckerberg dropped a big hint</a> about messaging on the earnings call. Basically, the company's going to follow the same exact process as it did with the News Feed &mdash; use Messenger as a way for users to communicate with brands, and then gradually charge brands to reach those users.</p>
<p>Then there's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-search-opportunity-2015-7">search</a>. And <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-at-work-inspired-by-facebook-2014-11">Facebook for Work</a>. And Oculus.</p>
<p>Not all of these products will succeed with users or turn into big dollar signs. But some surely will.</p>
<p><strong>Its acquisition strategy is genius. </strong>You may have a teenager at home who thinks Facebook is boring and for old people. They probably use Instagram instead, like 300 million other people. Or maybe WhatsApp, like 800 million other people. Facebook owns both.</p>
<p>Plus Messenger, which is its own standalone app with 700 million users.</p>
<p><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/55b95500371d2223518ba81e-960-540/infographic-q2-2015.jpg" alt="Facebook users" data-mce-source="Facebook" /></p>
<p><strong>It's quietly revolutionizing the $140 billion hardware market. </strong>While most of us know Facebook the product, the company is quietly <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-open-compute-project-history-2015-6">putting the screws</a> to decades-old computer infrastructure giants like Cisco by taking the designs it built for its own data centers and releasing them under an open-source license. Now, a bunch of startups are taking those designs and starting to build businesses around them.</p>
<p><strong>The days of awkward PR gaffes are over.</strong> Remember Zuck's disastrous, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/zuckbergs-meltdown-your-10-essential-takeaways-2010-6">sweaty</a>, onstage performance at the D Conference in 2010? Contrast that with his calm demeanor at more recent conferences, or the pitch-perfect way he announced his wife's pregnancy &mdash;&nbsp;and past miscarriages &mdash; this week. The guy's gone from being viewed as a sort of uber-rich brat who doesn't care about your privacy to a likable genius. Oh, and speaking of privacy, when's the last time people got up in arms about Facebook's privacy policies?</p>
<p>Don't take my word for it. Wall Street analysts are <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-q2-2015-sell-side-research-response-2015-7">tripping over themselves</a> to explain why you should buy the stock.</p>
<h2>Who else is there?</h2>
<p>Apple?</p>
<p>The iPhone revolutionized tech more than any product since the personal computer, but it's eight years old. Apple hasn't had a big hit product since &mdash; iPad sales are sinking, the Watch is off to a slow start, and Apple Music is shaping up to be its <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-music-has-big-problems-2015-7">worst-received product since Apple Maps</a>.</p>
<p>Google?</p>
<p>It's bigger than Facebook by many measures &mdash; users, ad revenues, profits &mdash; and it had a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-q2-earnings-2015-7">solid quarter</a> too. But Facebook is coming up fast in areas where Google should've dominated, like mobile and video. Google's not going anywhere, but unless one of Larry Page's moonshots starts to pay off soon, it's not going to rule the tech industry like it did last decade.</p>
<p>Microsoft? Comebacks are fun, but it's been playing defense for years.</p>
<p>Amazon is probably the closest &mdash; lots of users, impeccably managed business, and at least two major lines of business (ecommerce, the original one, and Amazon Web Services, its $7-billion-a-year cloud-computing juggernaut).</p>
<p>But Amazon has had an extra decade to get its business churning; it doesn't reach as many users around the world as Facebook does, and it's never proven it can turn consistent profits like Facebook has.</p>
<p>Every generation in tech has its hero. The current generation kicked off in 2009, the beginning of the long boom.</p>
<p>Facebook won this generation. Mark Zuckerberg, COO Sheryl Sandberg, and the rest of the people there should take a deep breath and enjoy their success.</p>
<p>But not for too long. The one thing you can always count on in tech is that kings have a short reign.</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-third-party-identity-provider-2015-7" >Facebook is dominating Google, Yahoo, and Amazon in this one niche area</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-rules-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-messenger-app-new-features-video-2015-3">Watch Mark Zuckerberg explain what the new Messenger app will do</a></p> Robert Galbraith/Reutershttp://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-2-ways-the-tech-economy-could-be-making-inequality-worse-2015-8Here are the 2 ways the tech economy could be making inequality worsehttp://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-2-ways-the-tech-economy-could-be-making-inequality-worse-2015-8
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 11:21:21 -0400Katie Allen
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55be32c9371d22c6178baa76-3117-2338/rtr3xpzq.jpg" alt="homeless inequality poverty" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson" data-mce-caption="A man looks at his phone as he walks out of the courthouse past a man arranging his bags in Los Angeles, California July 8, 2014. " /></p><p>Look around and it seems pretty obvious that technology has made daily life easier.</p>
<p>We can watch almost any film or listen to any song at the press of a button. People pay their bills on their mobile phones. Stressed parents get to dodge trolley tantrums by swapping the supermarket run for online shopping. And let&rsquo;s not mention all that free online news.</p>
<p>But, for all the convenience that new innovations afford us, what if this rise of technology is actually exacerbating inequality?</p>
<p>There are certainly some red flags right now.</p>
<p>The first warning signs come from financial markets where technology stocks have soared this year.</p>
<p>Search engine Google&rsquo;s shares recently <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/17/us-google-research-idUKKCN0PR1FG20150717">hit a record high of over $700</a>, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world, second only to that other tech giant Apple. The moves have fired up the tech-heavy Nasdaq index and taken it <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/23/nasdaq-new-record-high-dotcom-bubble">back to the giddy heights of the dotcom bubble</a> 15 years ago.</p>
<p>The problem is not rising share prices per se, but rather what they are telling us about the power of shareholders and the consequences in terms of what is left over to be invested in wages and innovation.</p>
<p>This question of how the profits of technology trickle down is explored in the recent book <a href="http://idisrupted.com/">iDisrupted</a> by economist Michael Baxter and entrepreneur John Straw.</p>
<p>Analysing the economic impact of emerging technologies, they highlight two potential agents for rising inequality.</p>
<p>Firstly, patents, and the way they ensure that profits from innovation accrue to larger companies and their owners.</p>
<p>&ldquo;The existence of patents may mean that the majority of wealth created from innovations boosts the wealth of the very richest in society, but restricts the extent of trickle down,&rdquo; they write.</p>
<p><img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/55be31fc2acae710008bc57c-3349-2512/rtx1fp6x.jpg" alt="Apple CEO Tim Cook at WWDC 2015" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Robert Galbraith" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Secondly, the fact more goods are being offered for free online.</p>
<p>The problem with this is that just about the only means left to fund digital products is advertising, a sector where revenues are increasingly dominated by a handful of companies such as Google and Facebook.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Without the enormous volume of content on the internet, there would be little point in either search or social media,&rdquo; write Baxter and Straw. &ldquo;Yet the revenue from this content accrues to the companies that provide search and social media, not the producers of content.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Those two trends play out in the very modern context of lawyered-up, patent-hungry tech giants and the emergence of a free online economy. But at their heart lies a very long-standing tie between ownership and profits.</p>
<p>Indeed, the challenge of fairly sharing the spoils of growth has risen hand-in-hand with shareholder power, according to the Bank of England&rsquo;s chief economist, Andy Haldane.</p>
<p>He concludes that companies are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/25/shareholders-receive-too-much-money-from-business-says-chief-economist">paying out too much to shareholders when they should be investing more</a>. Shareholders are also being put before employees, but there is nothing new there, says Haldane, citing an example from almost a century ago involving the carmaker Henry Ford.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/2015/833.aspx">speech published last week</a>, Haldane said:</p>
<p><em>&ldquo;In the US in 1919, a case against Henry Ford was brought before the Michigan supreme court by the Dodge brothers, a minority shareholder. They challenged Ford&rsquo;s decision to reinvest the firm&rsquo;s profits to expand the business and pay better wages, which they felt contradicted the purposes of the corporation &ndash; maximising shareholder return. The court ruled that Ford owed a duty to his shareholders and ordered him to pay a special dividend.&rdquo;</em></p>
<p>There are clearly parallels with the modern-day <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/18/apple-shares-carl-icahn-stock-market-value">tension between Apple and its activist investor Carl Icahn</a>, who campaigned to encourage the iPhone maker to increase returns to shareholders.</p>
<p>The authors of iDisrupted also look to Ford in their argument on the importance of profits trickling down.</p>
<p>They cite the carmaker&rsquo;s doubling of wages at his factory to $5 a day and the oft-disputed claim that his motivation was the hope other manufacturers would follow suit and so the potential number of car buyers would rise.</p>
<p><img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55be32a2371d2254008bbf9f-2104-1578/rtr1r80j.jpg" alt="carl icahn" data-mce-source="REUTERS/Chip East" /></p>
<p>It may be the stuff of myths, but a century later the story provides a neat way of explaining how a rising gap between the few haves and the many have-nots could stop technological advances in their tracks.</p>
<p>Baxter and Straw sum this up: &ldquo;Those who suggest that technology may create a world of extreme inequality may be right, but equally it may be that unless the profits from technology trickle down, pushing up wages and creating demand, then further technological evolution may be impossible.</p>
<p>&ldquo;If technology leads to more inequality, it may have the effect of suffocating demand from the economy and can become self-destroying, making further technological evolution redundant as only the few could afford it.&rdquo;</p>
<p>They are right to worry about the prospects for innovation just as Haldane is right to worry about investment, whether it is in training, innovation or machinery.</p>
<p>You only have to look at the figures on the UK&rsquo;s woeful productivity performance in recent years. BoE deputy governor Jon Cunliffe underscored these in a recent <a href="http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2015/speech825.pdf">speech</a>.</p>
<p>&ldquo;In the 10 years prior to the crisis, growth in the hours worked in the UK economy accounted for 23% of overall economic growth. The mainstay of economic growth, the other 77%, came from growth in productivity,&rdquo; he said.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Since 2013, only 9% of UK annual economic growth has come from productivity improvement. The remaining 91% has come from the increase in the total hours worked.&rdquo;</p>
<p>For companies that want to thrive, the message is clear. For policymakers looking to solve Britain&rsquo;s productivity puzzle, there are lessons too.</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s time to ditch the financial engineering and put more into innovation: the swathe of companies using ultra-low interest rates to fund acquisitions would do better to invest in ideas and equipment.</p>
<p>And it&rsquo;s time to claw back power from shareholders: stop pouring money into dividends and instead let employees share some of the gains.</p>
<p><em>This article originally appeared on <a rel="canonical">guardian.co.uk</a></em></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-2-ways-the-tech-economy-could-be-making-inequality-worse-2015-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/song-made-using-coins-drummer-music-video-2015-7">This drummer created a whole song by only using the sound of coins</a></p> REUTERS/Lucy Nicholsonhttp://www.businessinsider.com/brent-hurleys-saymore-app-lets-you-call-complete-strangers-2015-7An early YouTube employee just launched an app that lets you call complete strangershttp://www.businessinsider.com/brent-hurleys-saymore-app-lets-you-call-complete-strangers-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 11:19:22 -0400Maya Kosoff
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/55b61e5e371d2212008b9cdd-1024-768/unnamed.jpg" alt="brent hurley David Huynh saymore" data-mce-source="Brent Hurley" data-mce-caption="SayMore co-founders Brent Hurley and David Huynh" /></p><p>Brent Hurley, one of YouTube's original founding members, first got the idea for his new app, <a href="http://www.saymore.io">SayMore</a>, when he was on a flight to Boston.</p>
<p>"I was seated next to an older gentleman. We kind of struck up a conversation and then talked for the entire flight &mdash; I learned all about his life, talked about all these interesting things, and then kind of went our separate ways after the plane landed," he says.</p>
<p>"I think a lot of people have had similar experiences, but they're very spontaneous and kind of few and far between, so I was wondering &nbsp;if we could use technology to make that accessible, more on-demand."</p>
<p>Hurley's new app, SayMore, is what Hurley calls a "talking network." The app&nbsp;lets you talk to strangers who you're connected to by mutual interests &mdash; things like parenting or tech, for example &mdash; on the phone, through the app. Previous attempts at real-time anonymous communication, like&nbsp;ChatRoulette and Omegle, lost their flair with users; SayMore attempts to pair up users based on mutual interests to keep conversations flowing.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Instead of using your phone number, conversations are conducted through the app. You make a profile, select your interests, and calls use either your data plan or WiFi, but not your cell plan's talk time minutes.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p><span>Hurley says he's raised a small friends and family round of funding for the app, and its backers include a bunch of early YouTubers like Brent's brother, co-founder Chad Hurley,&nbsp;early YouTube CFO Gideon Yu, and&nbsp;Chris Maxcy, the company's&nbsp;first business hire.</span></p>
<p><span></span><span>To combat abuse, Hurley says SayMore lets you decline calls, block specific users, and flag users for the app's moderators to review as well.</span></p>
<p><span>Hurley says he anticipates three main demographics using his app: stay-at-home moms who are looking for intelligent conversation during the day, daily commuters who have time to kill on their way to and from the office, and digital natives. "E</span>ven though consensus says people don't talk on their phones anymore and text has killed the phone call, we do believe that if they try the app and they have their first phone call, based on testing people say it's a refreshing, cool experience and we think this will just give them a new outlet to share," Hurley says.</p>
<p><span>Instead of having your social interactions "indexed in perpetuity" like they are on existing social networks, Hurley says, he sees SayMore as part of an anti-social network trend. SayMore is&nbsp;ephemeral; after you finish your conversation with someone, you hang up, rate the person you talked to, and then it's on to the next conversation. Hurley says that in the future, he's looking to add the ability to friend people you've spoken to on the app.&nbsp;</span><span>You'll only be able to friend people after you have a conversation with them, he says.</span>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-38-coolest-startups-in-silicon-valley-2015-7" >The 38 coolest startups in Silicon Valley</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brent-hurleys-saymore-app-lets-you-call-complete-strangers-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-headphones-tips-tricks-apple-2015-7">All the incredibly useful things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do</a></p> Brent Hurleyhttp://www.businessinsider.com/a-retired-computer-scientist-is-selling-his-800-acre-ranch-for-1095-million-2015-7A retired computer scientist is selling his 800-acre ranch for $10.95 millionhttp://www.businessinsider.com/a-retired-computer-scientist-is-selling-his-800-acre-ranch-for-1095-million-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 11:04:48 -0400Madeline Stone
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55bb81242acae78a008bbe9a-1422-1067/sky-river-003.jpg" alt="jim mitchell house" data-mce-source="Hall and Hall" /></p><p>A nearly 800-acre ranch belonging to retired computer scientist and engineer Jim Mitchell and wife Judy Wainwright has come on to the market for $10.95 million, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wright-stuff-in-steamboat-springs-1438263451?tesla=y">according to the Wall Street Journal</a>.</p>
<p>The ranch, which includes a 9,500-square-foot house inspired by a Frank Lloyd Wright design, is located in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and is a haven for local wildlife like bald eagles and deer.</p>
<p><span>Mitchell spent decades working with computers&nbsp;and became wealthy enough to buy the ranch and his own plane.</span></p>
<p><span>"<span>I got into computers in the early days and wrote my fist line of code in 1962," <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wright-stuff-in-steamboat-springs-1438263451?tesla=y">he told the WSJ</a>.&nbsp;</span></span></p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-investor-jason-calacanis-is-selling-his-los-angeles-home-for-3-million-2015-7" >Early Uber investor and serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis is selling his Los Angeles home for $3 million</a></strong></p>
<h3>The home is perched on a hill above an area to the north of Steamboat, called Elk River Valley.</h3>
<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55bb8092371d22c6178ba3ac-400-300/the-home-is-perched-on-a-hill-above-an-area-to-the-north-of-steamboat-called-elk-river-valley.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>Mitchell and Wainwright purchased the home in 1999. They spent several years constructing the home, which was inspired by a Frank Lloyd Wright design.</h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55bb800e371d2215008bb8c2-400-300/mitchell-and-wainwright-purchased-the-home-in-1999-they-spent-several-years-constructing-the-home-which-was-inspired-by-a-frank-lloyd-wright-design.jpg" alt="" />
<br/><br/><h3>"We hiked up there in snowshoes in the winter with the architect and within 15 minutes we said the house has to optimize the views and has to have lots of windows," Mitchell told the WSJ.</h3>
<img src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/55bb8007371d22462c8b95fa-400-300/we-hiked-up-there-in-snowshoes-in-the-winter-with-the-architect-and-within-15-minutes-we-said-the-house-has-to-optimize-the-views-and-has-to-have-lots-of-windows-mitchell-told-the-wsj.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p><em>Source: <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wright-stuff-in-steamboat-springs-1438263451?tesla=y">WSJ</a></em></p></p>
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/a-retired-computer-scientist-is-selling-his-800-acre-ranch-for-1095-million-2015-7#/#all-of-those-windows-make-for-a-dramatic-scene-when-the-house-is-lit-up-at-night-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/adderall-add-adhd-amphetamine-drug-effects-body-2015-6">What Adderall is actually doing to your body</a></p> Hall and Hallhttp://www.businessinsider.com/anker-qi-wireless-charger-2015-7Free your smartphone from cables with this $16 wireless chargerhttp://www.businessinsider.com/anker-qi-wireless-charger-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 11:00:00 -0400Jeff Dunn
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><em>The Insider Picks team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business Insider has affiliate partnerships so we may get a share of the revenue from your purchase.</em></span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Y839YMU/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00Y839YMU&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=biip_072715_anker-powerpoint-qi-charger-20&amp;linkId=HVLYFPRTR6ZMLHJU" target="_blank"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55b6375e371d22dd2e8b8d09-997-748/4x3 anker powerpoint qi wireless charger.jpg" alt="Anker PowerPoint Qi Wireless Charger" data-mce-source="Amazon" /></a>Modern smartphones are miraculous things, but they're still tied to a few dated technological concepts that keep them from being as advanced as they could be.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">One of the most evident examples of this is how we charge them. Having one rechargeable battery is much easier than going through a stream of disposable ones, but with that shift has come the inconvenience of charging cables, which keep what's supposed to be a portable device tethered to an outlet for extended periods of time.&nbsp;</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-does-wireless-charging-work-2014-8"><span class="s2">Steps have already been taken</span></a> to change this, however. The past few years have seen the introduction of various wireless charging standards, which aim to remove the inherent clutter of cables and make it so powering up your phone is as easy as plopping it on a pad. </span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Y839YMU/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00Y839YMU&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=biip_072715_anker-powerpoint-qi-charger-20&amp;linkId=HVLYFPRTR6ZMLHJU"><span class="s2">Anker's PowerPort Qi Wireless Charger</span></a> is a good demonstration of how much more convenient a cable-<em>less</em> future could be. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/qi-wireless-charging-at-ces-2013-1"><span class="s2">It uses Qi</span></a> (pronounced "chee"), the most popular of those wireless charging standards, and is only about the size of a drink coaster. To charge, just place your Qi-compatible phone on top and wait for the small LED lights to tell you when the battery is full.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Standards like Qi haven't been adopted by every manufacturer yet &mdash; hello, Apple &mdash; but Anker's solution natively supports newer devices like the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00U8KSUIG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00U8KSUIG&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=biip_072715_anker-powerpoint-qi-charger-20&amp;linkId=64QNQCPPGGW7K23K">Samsung Galaxy S6</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00R1984DI/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00R1984DI&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=biip_072715_anker-powerpoint-qi-charger-20&amp;linkId=S4OHPZQLWIVQWKEZ">Nexus 6</a>&nbsp;and<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-nexus-7-tablet-2015-7"><span class="s2">&nbsp;7 tablets</span></a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TRLXO6U/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00TRLXO6U&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=biip_072715_anker-powerpoint-qi-charger-20&amp;linkId=OQVXHTV7YY4EMDVX">Nokia Lumia 928</a>, among others. Older Qi-enabled devices can be hooked up through a wireless adapter.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1">The charger is one of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;field-keywords=Qi%20wireless%20charger&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;rh=n%3A2335752011%2Ck%3AQi%20wireless%20charger&amp;tag=biip_072715_anker-powerpoint-qi-charger-20&amp;url=search-alias%3Dmobile&amp;linkId=HKAVKGJMC5SWO6JI">many Qi devices</a> currently marked down on Amazon, but with many positive user reviews behind it, it looks like a solid deal at $16. Qi chargers won't refill your battery quite as quickly as a regular charger &mdash; though that's poised to change in the coming years &mdash; but if you're tired of wires, it's an alternative worth considering.</span></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Y839YMU/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00Y839YMU&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=biip_072715_anker-powerpoint-qi-charger-20&amp;linkId=HVLYFPRTR6ZMLHJU"><span class="s2"><strong>Anker PowerPort Qi Wireless Charger</strong>, $15.99 (normally $35.99), available on Amazon</span></a>.<br /> </span></p>
<hr />
<p class="p1">&nbsp;</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-nexus-7-tablet-2015-7" >This Android tablet may be old, but it's still a great option if you can't afford an iPad or Surface</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>READ THIS:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-make-iced-coffee-at-home" >Brew your iced coffee at home and save $100 a month</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/anker-qi-wireless-charger-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> Amazonhttp://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-email-against-powerpoint-presentations-2015-7PowerPoints aren't allowed at Amazon — this 2004 email from Jeff Bezos explains whyhttp://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-email-against-powerpoint-presentations-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 10:42:57 -0400Madeline Stone
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-email-against-powerpoint-presentations-2015-7">See the email &raquo;</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-email-against-powerpoint-presentations-2015-7#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> <p>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-read-receipts-texting-etiquette-apple-2015-7">Stop making the biggest mistake when it comes to texting etiquette</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/podcasts-that-make-you-smarter-2015-717 podcasts that will make you smarterhttp://www.businessinsider.com/podcasts-that-make-you-smarter-2015-7
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 10:35:00 -0400Richard Feloni and Drake Baer
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/55bbc0792acae7c23f8b9828-1693-1270/pppp.jpg" alt="ira glass marc maron mike birbiglia" data-mce-source="Michael Buckner/Getty" /></p><p></p>
<p>The massive success of last fall's "Serial" true crime podcast and this year's "WTF" podcast interview with President Barack Obama marked a cultural shift in podcasts going from a niche interest to a mainstream form of media.</p>
<p>According to a report this April from the Pew Research Center, one-third of Americans age 12 or older have listened to at least one podcast episode, up from just 9% in 2008.</p>
<p>There are tons of great podcasts on nearly any subject you can think of, but we've collected some of our favorites that are perfect for those of us always eager to learn something new, whether it's about the economy, history, or even the workings of Hollywood.</p>
<p>Here's some prime listening material for your next commute:</p><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-book-recommendations-2015-4" >14 books Mark Zuckerberg thinks everyone should read</a></strong></p>
<h3>'This American Life' provides a deep look into American society. </h3>
<img src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5413488369bedd0e2b0793bd-400-300/this-american-life-provides-a-deep-look-into-american-society.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>"This American Life" has become a byword for oral storytelling.</p>
<p>Beyond being a place for moving and hilarious stories, "This American Life" does staggering levels of reporting; few outlets made the financial crisis as human and understandable as Ira Glass and the gang.</p>
<p>It lives up to the hype.</p>
<h3><a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/" target="_blank">Start listening here &gt;&gt;</a></h3></p>
<br/><br/><h3>'Fresh Air' will give you an intimate look at your favorite writers, celebrities, and journalists.</h3>
<img src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/55bbafd1371d2210008bba68-400-300/fresh-air-will-give-you-an-intimate-look-at-your-favorite-writers-celebrities-and-journalists.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>NPR's "Fresh Air" host Terry Gross has been on the air for more than four decades, and her interviewing skills have earned her accolades like the Peabody award, the Columbia Journalism Award, and a spot in the National Radio Hall of Fame.</p>
<p>Gross may have a smooth, relaxed speaking style, but the way she digs deep into her interview subjects will keep you engaged throughout the conversation, whether it's about Jake Gyllenhaal's acting process or what a writer learned from covering Mexican drug cartels.</p>
<h3><a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/">Start listening here &gt;&gt;</a></h3></p>
<br/><br/><h3>'Freakonomics Radio' will show you surprising connections. </h3>
<img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/55bbaece371d22a40e8bb870-400-300/freakonomics-radio-will-show-you-surprising-connections.jpg" alt="" />
<p><p>Journalist Stephen J. Dubner and economist Steven D. Levitt became sensations when their book "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Economist-Explores-Hidden-Everything/dp/0060731338/" target="_blank">Freakonomics</a>" was published in 2005.</p>
<p>In 2010, Dubner launched a podcast with the same mission as their bestselling books: ferreting out connections between seemingly unrelated things.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the shows tend toward the intellectually provocative, with the biggest hits having titles like "<a href="http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/07/30/freakonomics-goes-to-college-part-1-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/">Is College Really Worth It?</a>" and "<a href="http://www.freakonomics.com/2010/11/04/freakonomics-radio-how-much-does-the-president-really-matter/">How Much Does the President of the U.S. Really Matter?</a>"</p>
<h3><a href="http://freakonomics.com/radio/freakonomics-radio-podcast-archive/" target="_blank">Start listening here &gt;&gt;</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3></p>
<br/><br/><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/podcasts-that-make-you-smarter-2015-7#/#marketplace-will-keep-you-up-to-date-with-the-worlds-top-business-news-4">See the rest of the story at Business Insider</a> Michael Buckner/Getty